Targeted screening for Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials using data-driven disease progression models

ABSTRACT Heterogeneity in Alzheimer’s disease progression contributes to the ongoing failure to demonstrate efficacy of putative disease-modifying therapeutics that have been trialled over the past two decades. Any treatment effect present in a subgroup of trial participants (responders) can be diluted by non-responders who ideally should have been screened out of the trial. How to identify (screen-in) the most likely potential responders is an important question that is still without an answer. Here we pilot a computational screening tool that leverages recent advances in data-driven disease progression modelling to improve stratification. This aims to increase the sensitivity to treatment effect by screening out non-responders, which will ultimately reduce the size, duration, and cost of a clinical trial. We demonstrate the concept of such a computational screening tool by retrospectively analysing a completed double-blind clinical trial of donepezil in people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (clinicaltrials.gov: NCT00000173 ), identifying a data-driven subgroup having more severe cognitive impairment who showed clearer treatment response than observed for the full cohort.