Original from: 360dx

The Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative (DAC) announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with Janssen Research & Development and Danaher subsidiary Beckman Coulter Diagnostics to validate blood-based biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease.

Samples for the validation will be collected at the Catholic University of Korea and will represent people across all stages of Alzheimer's including mild cognitive impairment, preclinical Alzheimer's, and Alzheimer's, based on clinical assessments and amyloid PET confirmation, as well as healthy controls.

DAC intends to "bridge knowledge gaps of low- and middle-income country populations and enable the development of globally generalizable blood-based tests for Alzheimer's disease," the collaborative said in a statement, noting that nearly all blood-based biomarker studies in Alzheimer's disease to date have been conducted on Caucasian populations of Western European or American origin.

"DAC's access to a wide range of Alzheimer's disease patient cohorts, especially from underrepresented populations, highlights the true heterogeneity of the disease," Zivjena Vucetic, chief medical officer at Beckman Coulter Diagnostics, said in a statement. "Accessing diverse patient samples is critical to our ability to develop a high-quality, reliable immunoassay test available to patients around the world."

Vucetic added that the partnership with DAC will help enable Beckman Coulter to develop a "scalable, patient-friendly, blood-based test for Alzheimer's disease."

Beckman Coulter previously said that it had partnered with Fujirebio to develop blood-based diagnostic assays for neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's.

Earlier this year, the DAC announced a new initiative in five countries to use blood-based biomarkers and confirmatory diagnostic testing to improve timely diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

Source: Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative, Janssen, Beckman Coulter Partner to Validate Alzheimer's Biomarkers