Alzheimer’s

By 2010, 35.6 million people are expected to be living with Alzheimer’s disease globally (Alzheimer’s Disease International). The total will probably double every couple of decades and reach approximately 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia in the Western world with an estimated 5 million cases in the US with an annual cost of £150bn. With an ageing population, this incidence is likely to rise to over 16 million in the US by 2050. Currently there is no simple diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s though the presence of a particular genetic marker is linked with predisposition. The value of this test remains unequivocal.

Proteome Sciences is committed to the discovery of new clinically relevant biomarkers of Alzheimer’s which we believe will lead to earlier and more accurate diagnosis, and to develop new targets for drug discovery.

Proteome Sciences initially discovered biomarkers in CSF (cerebrospinal fluid), followed up by the discovery of 36 novel serum biomarkers for the early detection of Alzheimer’s. The serum biomarkers have not only been confirmed by two GSK publications in Proteomics Clinical Applications 2008:2 and Biomarkers 2008:13(6). The Biomarkers paper describes the discovery and validation of novel plasma biomarkers in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients responding to treatment with rosiglitazone in Phase IIb clinical trials.

A panel of nine protein biomarkers have been selected as the content of a blood biomarker assay panel that is in late development testing at KCL, London.

Following the largest study ever of its kind, researchers from the UK and France have identified for the first time three new genes linked to Alzheimer’s. The breakthrough published in two studies in the journal Nature Genetics September, 2009 is the first since APOE, the only other gene for Alzheimer’s, was uncovered 15 years ago and has been hailed as a leap forward towards effective treatments.

One of the newly associated genes, CLU produces the protein clusterin that has been shown to be involved in the clearance of amyloid beta peptide, a major component of the ’plaques’ that form in the brain of patients with Alzheimer’s. Clusterin is one of the protein biomarkers on our AD blood biomaker assay panel. Proteome Sciences has strong intellectual property coverage for the diagnostic and prognostic utility of clusterin, and has already developed a mass spectrometric (MS) based clusterin assay for a variety of applications.

With a particular focus on post-translational modifications of tau and beta-amyloid proteins, Proteome Sciences is also working with KCL London to identify disease pathways in Alzheimer’s. This work has led to the identification of many new phosphorylation sites in tau protein isolated from Alzheimer’s diseased brains of the discovery of novel kinase activity as good potential new drug targets to prevent and/or delay the progression of Alzheimer’s.

Partnering

These recent developments are opening up multiple new avenues and opportunities for the commercial exploitation of Proteome Sciences’ strong intellectual property position in Alzheimer’s through serial outlicenses.

License discussions are being actively pursued with a range of diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies.

Strategic pharmaceutical partners are required to accelerate the validation of the novel drug targets and to develop small molecule and biological agents against our discoveries.