NovelTAP · Novel diagnostic Tools for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases

Neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s (PD) and Alzheimer’s (AD) diseases begins several years prior to the appearance of clinical symptoms and in total, over eight million people in Europe were living with PD or AD in year 2010. Currently, there are no diagnostic tools which allow for early diagnose and/or monitoring the progression these diseases in living patients and the available therapeutic methods only offer transient symptomatic relief. Increasing evidence suggest that early diagnosis and intervention are crucial for any future therapeutic strategies to treat and/or slow the progression of these devastating diseases.The target of the PoC project is to establish the innovation potential of using the antibodies developed by the PI as diagnostic tools in PD and AD. To fulfill this target, testing and commercialization activities will take place. Specifically, the PoC project will focus on the in-vitro and in-vivo testing of the antibodies using the blood and the cerebrospinal fluid obtained post-mortem from PD and AD patients as well as from animal transgenic models. If successful, these novel antibodies would enable the development of preclinical diagnostic tools for detecting and measuring protein aggregation and other biomarkers, which could ultimately lead to the development of novel and desperately needed pre-diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for treating and/or preventing neurodegeneration in PD and AD. With the help of the PI’s research team, the Technology Transfer Office of EPFL and subcontractors, the PI will develop a commercialization roadmap required to establish proof of concept.