Caprion Biosciences, a leading specialty CRO laboratory, has entered into a scientific collaboration with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) Biomarkers Consortium. This Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) Proteomics Project aims to track early disease progression by changes in protein concentration (biomarkers) over time in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD).
The team will leverage results from an earlier collaboration in which 142 candidate protein biomarkers identified in the scientific literature were subsequently quantified in subjects including AD, MCI, and healthy controls. That study, published in 2015 (Spellman D. et al, Proteomics Clin Appl.), highlights the ability of Caprion's targeted MRM mass spectrometry-based platform to perform specific, sensitive and highly reproducible quantitation of large numbers of proteins in a single assay, using less than 0.1 mL of CSF.
The new study will focus on five potential biomarkers for absolute quantification that were selected based on good performance in the previous CSF Proteomics Project data set. The concentration of these proteins will be precisely measured in samples collected over a three-year or greater period from over 200 subjects including AD, MCI and healthy controls from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). The biomarker changes over time will be correlated to imaging and clinical data to assess the ability of the biomarkers to accurately track natural disease progression. Such markers could greatly enable the development of effective targeted therapies for AD. The biomarker panel used in this study will also measure over 140 additional protein markers, many of which have been associated with AD or with other central nervous system (CNS) diseases.
"This partnership with the FNIH is a great example of Caprion's ongoing commitment to identifying and validating biomarkers of CNS diseases. Our CNS ProteoCarta biomarker panel builds on Caprion's expertise in large targeted protein assays in multiple therapeutic areas including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases," said Martin LeBlanc, CEO of Caprion Biosciences.