OPKO Health, Inc. today announced the publication of a biomarker study yielding its diagnostic blood test candidate for the detection of Alzheimer's disease. The study, published in the Jan. 7th issue of the journal, Cell, reports on a powerful and general method for the identification in small blood samples of disease-specific antibodies that can serve as diagnostic biomarkers, as well as the discovery of two antibodies unique to patients with Alzheimer's disease. Prof. Thomas Kodadek, the senior author of the paper, stated, "The biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease reported in this publication should be useful in diagnosing the disease and for guiding the enrollment of early stage patients into clinical trials of new drug candidates. We believe that application of the technology will also permit the discovery of antibody biomarkers for early stage cancers and other diseases, which could allow for earlier therapy and, potentially, dramatically improved outcomes," he continued.
“We believe this technology has the potential to transform many areas of medicine and to be of significant commercial importance for OPKO”
OPKO jointly owns patent applications covering the technology and holds an exclusive license to the technology and is developing test kits based on these markers. Dr. Reddy Moola, the lead author on the paper, and a member of the OPKO R&D team, is leading OPKO's efforts to develop tests for pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and other important diseases. "We believe this technology has the potential to transform many areas of medicine and to be of significant commercial importance for OPKO," said Dr. Phillip Frost, Chairman and CEO of OPKO.
Simple blood test could allow doctors to determine a person’s risk for stroke or cognitive decline