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Avid's Brain Dye Can Spot Alzheimer's, Study Says
Alzheimer’s disease can be detected with a brain scan using radioactive dye developed by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals Inc., a study found, marking a step forward to the first tool to pinpoint the disease in 100 years.
Patients with a life expectancy of less than six months underwent brain scans using Avid’s dye. After death, their brains were autopsied. There was a strong correlation between plaques found in brain tissues and the places imaging suggested the protein would be, according to an abstract released at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Honolulu.
If the dye, called florbetapir, wins regulatory approval, doctors will have the first tool for a quick, definitive diagnosis since German physician Alois Alzheimer described the disease in 1906. Doctors today rely on memory tests, family histories and interviews with relatives. Autopsies are still needed to check for the presence of the brain protein called beta amyloid, a hallmark of the illness.
The past trials “made us think that it’s working well,” Daniel Skovronsky, Avid’s chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview before the study’s release. “Our hope is that once this agent is approved, perhaps it could be used to rule out Alzheimer’s.”
The study, part of the final stage of testing required to get U.S. approval, involved 220 people who were near the end of lives with illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. Philadelphia-based Avid aims to submit its results to the Food and Drug Administration this year, Skovronsky said.
Racing GE, Bayer
The company, General Electric Co. and Bayer AG are racing to develop chemical dyes to identify beta amyloid, creating diagnostics with a potential market of $3 billion a year, according to Harry Glorikian of consulting firm Scientia Advisors.
Avid is the first to finish the final stage of human testing. All three of the imaging tests are designed to cause beta amyloid clumps to light up when patients’ brains are scanned using PET, or positron emission tomography. The scanners read radiation from the dyes, which bind to beta amyloid.
A brain scan using florbetapir identified people at increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a separate study led by Reisa A. Sperling, a researcher at Harvard Medical School. Among patients who had mild cognitive impairment, 22 percent with amyloid plaques developed Alzheimer’s disease within a year, compared with 3 percent of those without the plaques, according to the findings presented at the conference.
As many as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia in older people, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kanoko Matsuyama in Tokyo at kmatsuyama2@bloomberg.net
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