Développement de stratégies innovantes pour une approche transdisciplinaire de la maladie d'Alzheime

In 2021, the research activities of the 8 DISTALZ teams have been completely restored since the first lockdown. The 2020 and 2021 budgets were delivered. However, the launch of the new international scientific advisory board has been postponed to 2022 because of the I-site ongoing assessment. We participated in the support and evaluation of the I-site final renewal, DISTALZ being a key partner of the structuration, the attractiveness and the national and international visibility of the Lille I-site ULNE research strategies. DISTALZ coordinates several European and global consortia, in genomics in particular, the European AD Biobank (EADB = 16 European 39,106 AD cases, 46,828 proxy-AD cases and 401,577 controls / follow-up study 25,392 AD cases and 276,086 controls. This study offers new insights into the new AD pathways. Since the creation of the LabEx, UMR1172 team 1 has shown a role for caffeine in slowing cognitive decline and the progression of neuropathological lesions in Alzheimer's disease in our animal models. These experimental work has allowed us to launch a phase 3 multicentre clinical trial to estimate the effet of caffeine on brain function in humans. DISTALZ researcher from UMR1172 team 2 published a highly disseminated paper in Nature Neuroscience (Wenzel J, et al. 2021) explaining the impact of COVID19 on brain dysfunction. The Tau Immune project has entered the Eurasanté bioincubator (Lille) and is now in its maturation phase. In 2021, the I-site ULNE had to be reviewed by an international reviewing committee to decide if, after 4 years of existence, it could be definitely confirmed. This reviewing was developed in parallel of the creation of an EPE (Experimental Public Establishment). Given that 36% of the DISTALZ budget came from the I-site, we get prepared to both possibility : the prolongation or the final cessation of the I-site. Hopefully in January 2022, the EPE was created and in March the I-site ULNE was definitively confirmed.