ADDF's grant to Abiant for developing accurate imaging diagnostic approach

Sep 9 2009

The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) announced today that it is providing a grant of $200,000 to Abiant, Inc. (Deerfield, IL), for the development of a highly accurate imaging diagnostic for Alzheimer's Disease. Abiant, a privately held company, is dedicated to the application of neuroimaging to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Abiant's diagnostic approach combines key advances in the analysis of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) images of the brain. The first of these was developed by Lisa Mosconi, PhD, Henry Rusinek, PhD, and Wai Tsui, PhD at the NYU School of Medicine's Center for Brain Health, directed by Mony de Leon, PhD. This advance allows the precise, automated measurement of glucose metabolism in the hippocampus, a brain structure that is critical to new memory formation and which is affected very early in Alzheimer's disease. Abiant is combining this with other key advances in statistical analysis tools that consolidate information from many regions in the brain into measurable patterns of disease progression. In studies using patients from academic centers worldwide, these approaches have been able to predict future decline, and to distinguish between types of dementia with very high accuracy.

"Abiant's diagnostic approach provides a potential path to clinician adoption and use of a powerful aid in early, accurate diagnosis that has not yet been achieved," says Howard Fillit, MD, ADDF's Executive Director. "The grant will enable Abiant to further validate and translate its approaches toward a beneficial tool for the Alzheimer's disease community."

"We are very pleased that ADDF is helping to fund our development efforts," comments Dawn Matthews, Chief Executive Officer of Abiant. "Not only will this help to accelerate our progress, but the ADDF will be a valuable partner in the guidance of our work toward broad clinical use."

Mony de Leon adds, "PET imaging measurement of activity in the brain, and in particular the hippocampus, can provide a powerful biomarker for the early and accurate detection of Alzheimer's disease. We are very pleased to see this step toward the translation of our research advances to clinical use."

ADDF is awarding the grant through its affiliate The Institute for the Study of Aging, Inc.