My trip Switzerland: Alzheimer, Women's Brain Project and beyond

Just back from a one-week trip that led me to Lausanne, Zurich and Geneva, I can't stop thinking about all the incredible news, the hopes and the challenges ahead of us - collectively, in the Alzheimer field, as well as with the Women's Brain Project.

Lausanne IX - the future of Alzheimer

My first destination was Lausanne, where some of the most important global stakeholders were convening to discuss the current state of Alzheimer's ecosystem and identify ways to promote innovation. I was delighted to participate, for Women's Brain Foundation , to a super interesting panel focusing on inclusivity and diversity. Moderated by the fantastic Phyllis Ferrell , this panel, which was extremely well received, offered a very welcomed chance to talk about sex and gender aspects in dementia, ethnicity, cultural differences and how all this will have to be taken into account in the next steps of our global response to dementia.

As dr Zul Merali put it:

'when it comes to dementia, all countries are developing countries'.

This is something I care about a lot, as it is becoming more and more clear that science has delivered, and now it's the time for policy makers to make their move. Practical actions and changes that can positively affect patients are slow to happen, and no country is doing a particularly good job. In the two days of the meeting the excitement was palpable from people involved in research and development, but much more caution came by people working directly with patients - the way towards inclusive, pervasive and fair healthcare in Alzheimer is still long.

What impressed me the most, though, was the panel featuring Birgitta Martensson (pic below), former CEO of Alzheimer Schweiz Suisse Svizzera . Birgitta is a force of nature and a pillar of the advocacy and policy community in our field. She has been diagnosed with dementia of Alzheimer's type two years ago, and she is now an even stronger advocate of the rights of people living with dementia. In her clear and incisive words she reminded each one of us that remembering a list of random names is not what matter to patients - it's your executive function, the ability to operate in daily life and enjoy company. This was a powerful message that reinforces the concept of patient-centricity; we cannot develop solutions to Alzheimer without asking the people living with it what they really need. And most likely the scales we currently use to evaluate success in trials do not sufficiently reflect that.

The WBP team reunites!

The meeting in Lausanne was a fantastic opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. It was great to reunite there with part of the Women's Brain Project team (pic below).

With Frances-Catherine Q. , M. Florencia Iulita Dr Antonella Santuccione Chadha , the time flew by with the usual combination of social activities and science chats (happening at the same time, by the way). In addition, it was for me reason of great pride to find in the audience of the Lausanne IX meeting many contributors to our WBP Elsevier book on sex and gender differences in Alzheimer, as well as several WBP collaborators and supporters. It made me realize how big our family is and how pervasive the WBP message has become.

(Here above a pic of me taking care of my brain health with a good dinner in Lausanne)

With Flor and Frances we travelled together to Zurich to attend WBP's annual general assembly. Travelling by train in Switzerland is a luxurious experience and one of the best environments to work - so a lot of work it was, but also fun in good company.

I had the pleasure of taking Flor to the Storchen hotel for a coffee -that at least is still there, as opposed to my favourite cheese shop which has disappeared. It was worth it. Postcard below.

WBP General Assembly: an impressive past and a bright future

On November 5th we held our WBP annual general assembly in Zurich, kindly hosted by the ETH thanks to Silvie Cuperus . Many people joined from Switzerland but also from other countries; many connected via zoom. Thanks to everybody who made their Saturday available to WBP! (below, me with Annemarie Schumacher Dimech and Florencia Iulita).

It was a privilege to present the activities of the scientific team at WBP. Papers, reviews, articles, books, conferences, lectures, workshops, the Patient Pathway Project, the project with the Economist Impact Unit...all this, put together in one slide deck, is incredibly impressive and made us all very proud.

A huge thank you to the scientific team of WBP, a group of scientists largely working probono on projects that are literally changing the world.

The activity report included also an overview of communication and policy projects, presented by Anna Dé ; worth mentioning, among many other achievements, Anna and Allison Dye made WBP land also on TikTok- please follow us there too!

The last part of the AGM was dedicated to future plans, guided by Antonella. We are sure that 2023 will be the year of the WBP research institute, and we discussed at length about it. This would be for me a dream coming true but as it approaches we start to realize practical aspects which we need to sort out. If you are reading this and you are in the position to donate to WBP, please do so as we need funding for the institute.

And of course, we ended up with a nice dinner :)

And Geneva?

Well Geneva was the last, quick part of the trip, just for the pleasure of wishing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Shahnaz Radjy in person and give her tons of presents. No pics here for privacy reasons, but many, many good memories.

What next?

As always after a good meeting, I was left with more questions than answers:

1. There is a lot going on in the Alzheimer's field (I think there is so much that I wrote a book called Alzheimer Revolution). As new solutions might be approaching, it is becoming more and more important to find ways for the innovation to reach everybody who need it - around the globe, regardless of wealth, gender, age and ethnicity. How can we convince policy makers of this revolution in progress?
2. Patients are the real experts and we need to tailor solutions around them. Patients reported outcomes are just the beginning - people living with dementia will be progressively involved in research design. But this is still happening in only a few excellence centers - how can we promote patient centricity globally?
3. If treatments will become available, there will be an immediate need for prioritization of patients. Individual characteristics such as sex, age, comorbidities will need to be taken into account. How can we predict which patients will benefit the most of a given treatment? in other words, how can we finally implement precision medicine in Alzheimer?
4. Awareness of sex and gender differences has strikingly increased over the past years, and this is obviously also thanks to the Women's Brain Project. But we are not there yet - how can we make sure that such differences are taken into consideration by drug developers and policy makers?

I think WBP has a key role to play in all of the above. I am particularly excited for some new and upcoming WBP projects, including a BrainAPP, that might help in this direction -stay tuned and support us in this revolution.