Investment from Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation
Imeka have announced an investment from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) to accelerate the development of novel biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The investment will support use of Imeka neuroimaging biomarkers in a large-scale, longitudinal study of dementia markers and their progression from pre-symptomatic stages to the onset of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
“Neuroinflammation has long been an area of interest in Alzheimer’s drug development, but without the proper biomarkers to monitor inflammation levels in the brain, researchers will struggle to validate their findings and showcase the efficacy of their drugs,” says Howard Fillit, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer at the ADDF. “The development of a novel neuroimaging tool, like Imeka’s, will not only prove vital for bringing neuroinflammatory therapeutics to market, but will also expand the biomarker pipeline to include multiple biomarkers exploring various pathways, all of which support the biology of aging approach—the idea that many underlying pathologies lead to the onset of the disease.”
Imeka’s proprietary neuroimaging technology helps pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies identify biomarkers associated with neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, MS, and Traumatic Brain Injury. Combining AI and neuroimaging, Imeka’s technology provides highly localised views of the effects of both disease and investigational treatments on white matter, equipping physicians with more detailed information on the brain to support patient assessments. As part of this new project, Imeka will evaluate three novel, non-invasive diffusion MRI biomarkers of neuroinflammation, demyelination, and axonal disruption in high-quality Alzheimer’s disease data sets as potential non-invasive and less costly alternatives to PET scans.
The study objectives include:
- Evaluating Imeka’s novel, non-invasive diffusion MRI biomarkers of neuroinflammation, demyelination, and axonal disruption with other imaging and fluid-based biomarkers.
- Confirming the potential of these three measures as monitoring biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease.
- Comparing Imeka’s biomarkers to a post-mortem Alzheimer’s disease brain bank.
The knowledge gained from this project will be brought into Imeka’s Advanced Neuro Diagnostic Imaging (ANDI) quantitative imaging software – which recently received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – helping radiologists, neurologists, and other medical professionals quickly translate these valuable insights into clinical practice.
“We are extremely grateful to collaborate with the ADDF on this breakthrough project,” said Jean-René Bélanger, Chief Executive Officer at Imeka. “Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease that impacts the everyday lives of millions of people and their families. We founded Imeka to develop novel, non-invasive neuroimaging technologies that can help search for and develop cures for Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases and, ultimately, to provide clinical tools that will help diagnose and monitor neurological diseases and conditions as well as orient treatments and evaluate their efficacy. The investment from the ADDF will fuel research that significantly advances our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease. Together, we can help improve the monitoring of existing treatments for Alzheimer’s, accelerate the discovery of new therapeutics to prevent and treat the disease, and improve the overall standard of care for both the diagnosis and treatment of patients.”
“Brain imaging is important for detecting and monitoring Alzheimer’s disease, but traditional imaging tools have mostly overlooked the role of white matter and the use of MRI as a sensitive and specific tool to assess neuroinflammation and the integrity of axons and myelin. We are excited to collaborate with the ADDF on this project. The post-mortem brain bank data and the in-vivo human patient data used for the validation part of the project are of unprecedented value and quality,” said Maxime Descoteaux, Co-Founder and Scientific Advisor at Imeka. “By combining data from this new project with Imeka’s ANDI quantitative imaging software, we can equip healthcare practitioners with greater detail about white matter through non-invasive, more-reliable imaging. We believe this critical information can enhance monitoring in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials and help improve patient outcomes.”