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DiaGenic ASA today announced that it has achieved important milestones in the development of a diagnostic test for Alzheimer's disease. New scientific data based on gene expression analysis confirms that the development of a simple blood-based test for diagnosing Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a realistic possibility in the near future, thereby enabling earlier therapeutic intervention. DiaGenic presented its findings at the 10th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders (ICAD) in Madrid. ICAD, which is organized by the Alzheimer's Association, is one of the largest gatherings of Alzheimer's disease researchers in the world. “There are currently no direct tests that confirm Alzheimer's disease in a living person, with diagnosis usually relying on subjective means, such as memory tests,” said Professor Bengt Winblad, of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, co-founder of ICAD, and renowned AD researcher. “This study clearly demonstrates the potential of DiaGenic's approach towards the development of an early, blood-based diagnostic test with the sensitivity and specificity the AD community is looking and hoping for.” DiaGenic ASA and its collaborative partner, IMGM Laboratories GmbH, Munich, used Applied Biosystems gene expression technology in a research study to identify a gene expression signature characteristic for AD in easily collectable peripheral blood samples. The extensive test set validated study shows clearly that the gene expression signature identified by DiaGenic can distinguish, with high accuracy, individuals with AD from both healthy elderly and younger individuals and also from those with another neurodegenerative disorder, Parkinson disease. In this extensive study, a set of 330 blood samples, including 125 from patients recently diagnosed with AD, was used to generate a gene expression model for the disease and an independent test set was then used to validate the model. This rigorous validation gave an accuracy of 87%.

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