Avid's radioactive brain dye can detect Alzheimer's--study
POSTED July 12, 2010 - 14:14 | POSTED BY neha gupta
Last edited by Jaspreet Virk on July 12, 2010 - 15:04
The research on Avid Radiopharmaceuticals' radioactive tracer AV-45, a scanner dye, compared the brain scans of people at the end of their lives with autopsy results after they died.
The researchers found a strong correlation between the toxic proteins present in the brains and the places suggested by the radioactive dye.
"There are some areas where there was a lot of amyloid on the scan and there was a lot of amyloid on the autopsy," said Weiner, who leads the National Institute on Aging's Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a five-year, $60 million study looking for early signs of Alzheimer's disease.
"This is certainly an important step toward the validation of AV-45 as a biomarker," he said in an interview.
No definitive diagnosis
Though doctors employ procedures like memory tests, family histories, interviews with relatives and simple paper-and-pencil tests in order to detect Alzheimer’s at an early stage, only an autopsy can confirm the disease.
Since long, research teams have been looking for other markers like brain volume or measurements of proteins in spinal fluid.
Thus, if the dye florbetapir is approved, doctors would certainly have access to an efficient tool for quicker and definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
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.
Global market for the tracer
As of now, Avid, a privately held Philadelphia company backed by Pfizer and Eli Lilly, is almost an year ahead in developing the tracer but competitors like General Electric and Bayer too have found fluoride 18 tracers in late-stage clinical trials.
The global market for the tracer could be between $1 billion to $5 billion, though it largely depends on the success of the drug companies in developing a treatment for the disease.
"I think there will be demand but it won't change the landscape for patients until we have something you can do about knowing you have amyloid," stated Dr. Reisa Sperling of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who has seen the results but did not take part in the autopsy study.
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