Lisbon, July 31, 2024 (Lusa) - Portuguese digital health company iLoF has received around €1.5 million from the UK's state innovation agency Innovate UK to research a treatment for Alzheimer's disease, it announced on Wednesday.
The deep tech company, based in Porto, said in a statement that it would use its Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform to support research into effective Alzheimer's treatments.
The Optomics® platform, developed by iLoF, contains a non-invasive clinical analysis process using a technology that combines photonics with the massive analysis of multimodal data.
According to the company, "the platform will be used in Bio-Hermes-002, an international study that is revolutionising Alzheimer's research and treatment, and is the most ambitious investigation into this disease to date."
iLoF was selected for this clinical study through Innovate UK's "Contracts for Innovation" programme, which funds new technological solutions to support public sector organisations in tackling complex challenges.
The Bio-Hermes-002 research is led by the Global Alzheimer's Platform Foundation (GAP), a US organisation dedicated to accelerating the availability of innovative therapies for neurological disorders, and is currently taking place in more than 30 clinical centres in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
In this study with more than a thousand participants, digital and blood biomarkers are being used to help expand scientific knowledge about the disease.
The company points out that "The data extracted will be processed by iLoF's Optomics® platform, which can shorten analysis periods and revolutionise the extent of information provided, providing more rigorous, personalised human patient screening. '
The company said that integrating this platform into Bio-Hermes-002 promises to "improve patient stratification, potentially reduce screening errors in clinical trials, and improve the efficiency of Alzheimer's research".
"By operationalising and making available a faster, more accurate and lower-cost biomarker analysis, iLoF's technology converges with the study's objective: to accelerate the development of an advanced treatment and diagnosis for Alzheimer's disease," it added.
In a disease that still has no cure available for the general population, early diagnosis of Alzheimer's is crucial, as it allows affected individuals to take measures to mitigate its progression, it said.
Digital and blood biomarkers predict how brain pathology is related to tau proteins and amyloid, currently measured by PET scans (positron emission tomography).
"These screenings and comparisons could offer more efficient and less invasive alternatives for diagnosing dementia," says the company, adding that this research aims to include a diverse range of individuals, from mild cognitive impairment to moderate Alzheimer's disease to cognitively normal controls.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), every year, there are 10 million new diagnoses of Alzheimer's, a degenerative cognitive disease with no cure, identified as the seventh leading cause of death worldwide.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 55 million people over the age of 65 in the world have dementia, which manifests itself in various forms, with Alzheimer's being the most common, projecting 139 million by 2050.
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