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Suvankar Pal on the motor neuron disease trial MND-SMART

Listen to a new podcast featuring Professor Suvankar Pal (MND SMART co-lead investigator and Co-Chair of MRC CTU ACORD Fellows Academy) in conversation with The Lancet Neurology on the first findings from the MND SMART trial.

National meeting of the ACORD Collaboration, 9 October 2024

The ACORD Collaboration held their national meeting in London on 9 October with updates presented on the fantastic progress made in MND-SMART, EJS ACT-PD, and OCTOPUS trials, along with plans for trials in dementia. As well as these informative updates, a panel session took place where leads for patient and public involvement and engagement in each of the disease areas discussed their shared experiences and common challenges, such as drug selection, EDI, recruitment, and patient preferences, along with areas for greater collaboration moving forwards. A deep dive into the MS register and recruitment also featured, along with an in depth look at treatment selection processes. There were, of course, opportunities for networking over lunch and coffee!

First results published from innovative platform trial, MND-SMART, aiming to speed up delivery of treatments for motor neuron disease
'25 at 25': ACORD collaboration for multi-arm multi-stage trials in neurodegenerative diseases
Edinburgh hosted the second National meeting of the ACORD Collaboration (and MRC CTU ACORD Fellows Academy) on 21 June 2023.  A great opportunity for researchers from around the UK to discuss approaches to clinical trials across the four disease areas (MS, MND, Parkinson's Disease and Alzheimer's) and ongoing research.

 
Success on the international stage for an ACORD Fellow! Dr Arpan Mehta was the winner of the Best Talk Award at this year's CURE-ND symposium

ACORD collaboration

A group looking at designing and running clinical trials in multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, MND, dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases

The remarkable progress in our understanding of the mechanisms underlying neurodegenerative diseases heralds an era when neurologists can be at the vanguard of regenerative medicine to improve patients' lives, instead of just chroniclers of their decline. To capitalise on these advances that are identifying ever more therapeutic candidates, whether re-purposed or entirely new, there is an urgent need for new generation of innovative adaptive clinical trials to test these putative medicines.

The national ACORD collaboration was formed in 2021 to encourage and support the development, running and reporting of multi-arm, multi-stage (MAMS) platform trials (with their associated scientific and infrastructure projects) in four major neurodegenerative diseases: MND, progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson’s disease and, ultimately, dementia. 

By 2021 the collaboration has reached the stage where a number of interventions are emerging for evaluation in pivotal phase III trials. Founding partners Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at UCL, Queen Square Institute of Neurology at UCL and the University of Edinburgh are overseeing work in the first three of these diseases, specifically the MND-SMART trial, the OCTOPUS trial in progressive MS, and the ACT-PD project laying the foundations for a large platform trial in Parkinson’s disease.

We are pleased to be working with the following charitable organisations: the UK MS Society, Cure Parkinson's Trust, Edmund J Safra Foundation, My Name’5 Doddie, MND Scotland, MND Association and Alzheimer’s Research UK. We look forward to collaborating with more charitable organisations as ACORD grows and continues to gain momentum.

The collaboration will be looking at specific challenges to develop, launch and run MAMS trials in these areas including:

  1. identification and prioritisation of interventions to evaluate;
  2. choice of outcome measures and how to capture them;
  3. associated infrastructure needs;
  4. how to co-produce and run these trial with the patient and public partners,
  5. how to fund them over a 5-10 year period, and
  6. how best to adapt them and report them over time.

By the end of 2021, academic partners in the ACORD enterprise included The University of Plymouth, The University of Warwick, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Imperial College, and The UK Dementia Research Institute. A particular cross-disease initiative, The Neurodegenerative Statistics group (NeuStats), formed earlier in 2021, have held productive meetings looking at statistical issues in the design, conduct, and analysis of the MAMS platform initiatives in all areas, sharing challenges and possible solutions. The NeuStats group will continue to meet on a three-monthly basis.

Professor Mahesh Parmar, Director of the MRC CTU at UCL and a founding partner of ACORD, says:

"We have made little or no progress in the treatment of a number of major neurodegenerative diseases for decades; the ACORD collaboration brings together patients, scientists, clinicians, statisticians, and charities across the country and offers us a once in generation opportunity to change the outlook for patients with these devastating diseases."

 

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