Blood test for early Alzheimer’s detection

“One of the first stages of Alzheimer’s disease involves formation of toxic aggregates, called oligomers, of the protein amyloid beta (Aβ). These oligomers can start to form more than a decade before symptoms appear and before other known disease markers form. The ability to detect these oligomers would permit early disease diagnosis. This would make strategies to intervene before irreparable brain damage occurs possible.

An NIH-funded research team led by Valerie Daggett at the University of Washington developed a method to detect toxic Aβ oligomers in patients’ blood. They tested the assay, called the soluble oligomer binding assay (SOBA), on nearly 400 banked human blood plasma samples. Results appeared on December 13, 2022, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”

The Risk of AIRA

Amyloid plaque are targeted and mobilized by anti-amyloid antibodies (such as lecanamab and donanamab). The antibody-bound plaque clear through the brain’s immune cells, called microglia, by binding Fc-gamma Receptors (FCgRs). (Alzheimers Dis Rep. 2023) This binding alters the microglia resulting in inflammation and cytokine storm and thereby creating a high risk of ARIA (https://ajronline.org/doi/epdf/10.2214/AJR.22.28461).

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Valerie Daggett, PhD

Chief Executive Officer

Valerie, the CEO/Founder of AltPep and an Endowed Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, has been a champion of groundbreaking research for over 30 years. Her inherent curiosity pushes her to uncover new ways of tackling problems in the field of amyloid diseases, where successes are few.  Her tenacity led to a revolutionary discovery of a protein structure that could dramatically change the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and over 50 other amyloid diseases. At AltPep, Valerie leads a team of innovators who are developing this platform to make the early, pre-symptomatic diagnosis and treatment of amyloid diseases a reality. Valerie holds a BA from Reed College, PhD from the University of California, San Francisco, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.