Detecting Alzheimer's early, easily, and accessibly through a blood test can allow for testing new drugs and improving treatments focused on slowing down this disease, which is still diagnosed late, when there are already evident symptoms and after invasive and expensive tests. From the Catalan capital, the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center (BBRC), the research center of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation, wants to advance this research with the launch of a cutting-edge laboratory throughout Spain dedicated to finding blood biomarkers that facilitate the diagnosis of this neurodegenerative disease. A biomarker is understood as any substance that provides information about a disease, such as those contained in a blood test or a urine sample.
The new laboratory will be located on the first floor of the building that houses the foundation and the BBRC, on the Ciutadella campus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), with a total area of 4,500 square meters. This headquarters, inaugurated in 2016, is where most of the tests for the Alfa Study are carried out, the main research conducted by the Pasqual Maragall Foundation center, consisting of a sample of more than 2,700 healthy people, most of them children of Alzheimer's patients. Based on the data extracted from this study, which began in 2013, BBRC researchers have found biomarkers that are related to the preclinical phase of the disease, which can begin up to 20 years before the onset of clinical symptoms.
Precisely, a recent BBRC study, led by Dr. Marc Suárez-Calvet, has allowed the discovery that a brain protein, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), is a precise biomarker for diagnosing Alzheimer's in early stages. This protein is found at higher levels in people with Alzheimer's and reaches the blood in small quantities. With the equipment that will be in the foundation's new laboratory, its presence can be detected in a sample extracted from a blood test, even if it has a very low concentration.
A recent BBRC study, led by Dr. Marc Suárez-Calvet, has allowed the discovery that a brain protein, GFAP, is a precise biomarker for diagnosing Alzheimer's in early stagesObtaining this sample from a blood test will be an easier and more accessible mechanism than the current reference test to detect Alzheimer's, the lumbar puncture, which requires surgical intervention, is not tolerated by all patients and cannot be repeated frequently.In this sense, Suárez-Calvet, points out that, if blood tests can be generalized as a mechanism to diagnose it, more research can be done, generating more possibilities to find new drugs and treatments that, at a minimum, allow modifying the progression of the disease.
In addition, the technology that will be available in the laboratory will allow automating processes, thus obtaining more robust and precise results. To acquire this ultra-sensitive machinery, the Pasqual Maragall Foundation launched a campaign to raise 150,000 euros in mid-September. A few days before the deadline, more than 145,000 euros have been raised.
"We had become skeptical about being able to diagnose Alzheimer's with a blood test, but there has been a change in recent years," explains Suárez-Calvet. A year ago, the same team led by this researcher identified another biomarker that allows it, the tau protein, which is found in the initial stages of the disease. "Research in the field of Alzheimer's biomarkers in the blood is advancing at such a pace that we are convinced that in the near future we will be able to detect the silent changes that occur in the brain with a simple blood test requested by the general practitioner. This will allow us to test treatments before neuronal damage is irreversible," he adds. Awaiting this great transformation in the approach to Alzheimer's, the BBRC's new research space, which will occupy about 150 square meters, expects to have a staff of about ten people within a couple of years who will contribute to making it possible.
Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
Stay informed with the latest news.
