Salivary Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders
Overview
Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and related disorders has historically been hampered by lack of readily accessible biomarkers. We have identified biomarkers present in the saliva that can distinguish between individuals with mild AD and normal controls.
Market Opportunity
Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementia‐causing neurodegenerative disorders such as frontotemporal dementia (FTD), Parkinson's disease (PD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are a phenotypically diverse set of disorders that may share some degree of overlap in terms of risk factors and common cellular pathways, such as those involved in neuroinflammation. Early diagnosis of these devastating disorders has historically been hampered by lack of readily accessible biomarkers. As neurodegenerative pathology typically accumulates over the course of years to decades a lengthy preclinical phase of development of an easily accessible, point‐of‐care biomarker assay that can stage core biological changes of AD and other neurodegenerative disorders is imperative for developing effective preventive strategies.
Innovation and Meaningful Advantages
There is a growing body of literature investigating extracellular vesicles isolated from plasma or serum for AD and ADRD biomarkers. A major drawback of using EVs isolated from blood is that most cell types produce EVs that enter the bloodstream, diluting the EVs that originate specifically from the brain. Saliva contains less of these contaminating EVs, and will have proportionately more EVs produced in the central nervous system due to direct innervation of the salivary gland by cranial nerves.
Commercial Development: Current State and Next Steps
We have shown that our method is able to distinguish individuals with AD and mild cognitive impairment from cognitively normal controls. We plan to use our data to develop a simple, non-invasive test that can be conducted in the primary care setting to identify people with an increased risk of developing AD and Alzheimer’s disease-related disorders.
Collaboration Opportunity
Our goal is to collaborate with diagnostic partners/funders who can bring into play the developmental, translational, and financial resources needed to advance this technology through regulatory approval and into the commercial marketplace.
Principal Investigator
Jill Kreiling, PhD
Assocaite Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry
Brown University
Brown Tech ID #3167
jill_kreiling@brown.edu
IP Information
63/270,626 priority date October 22, 2021.
Publication
Cheng, Y., et al., Inflammation-related gene expression profiles of salivary extracellular vesicles in patients with head trauma. Neural Regeneration Research, 2020. 15(4): p. 676-681.