Alzheimer test hope boosted by nanotech

SCIENTISTS HAVE discovered previously unseen signs in the blood which they say could be used to test for Alzheimer’s disease years before its symptoms appear.

The study used nanotechnology to extract blood signals of neurodegeneration in a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers revealed tests that capture early signs of neurodegeneration in blood offer enormous potential for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia patients to receive effective treatment or manage effectively their progressive condition before significant brain damage occurs.

Alzheimer’s disease can currently be diagnosed using brain scans, and is only possible after someone has been showing behavioural symptoms, such as memory impairment. However, by the time symptoms emerge, it is often too late to treat patients effectively.

While early markers of the disease are believed to be present in blood, they are in tiny quantities, making them difficult to detect, and likened to looking for a needle in a haystack.

But technology developed by and patented by the Nanomedicine Lab at the University of Manchester allows low blood signals that could non-invasively describe the onset of Alzheimer’s disease to be magnified and analysed.

Amyloid plaques are clumps of protein fragments which are toxic to nerve cells. Researchers employed nanotechnology in order to enhance the sensitivity of mass spectrometry, a technique used to analyse the patterns of proteins in blood. They used tiny nano-sized spheres, called liposomes, as a tool to fish out disease specific proteins from blood.

Kostas Kostarelos, a professor of nanomedicine, said: “We hope that these early warning signs could one day be developed into a blood test, and we are actively seeking validation of these signatures in human blood.”