NEW YORK – The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) announced Wednesday that its Diagnostics Accelerator has invested $10 million in Alamar Biosciences.
The funding will be used to seek US Food and Drug Administration approval for Alamar's ARGO-HT research platform to support the development of in vitro diagnostic tests, Alamar and the ADDF said in a statement. The platform automates the firm's high-throughput NULISA assays, which detect proteins to analyze blood-based biomarkers related to Alzheimer's and other dementias.
The NULISA system is based on proximity ligation assay (PLA) technology in which antibody pairs linked to barcoded DNA strands are used to detect protein targets. The firm has developed a series of capture and washing steps that increase the test's signal-to-noise ratio compared to traditional PLA.
"There is a pressing need to have biomarker panels for Alzheimer's patients so we can better diagnose and develop new treatments," ADDF Cofounder and CSO Howard Fillit said in a statement. "Alamar's innovative platform provides the opportunity for a first of its kind blood panel in Alzheimer's, which will be an important step as we move forward to delivering a more personalized approach for patients."
"A diagnostic platform such as Alamar's, that can detect and measure multiple disease pathways, will be instrumental in paving the way for early detection, biology of aging-based differential diagnosis, allowing for a precision medicine approach in Alzheimer's," Fillit added.
The $10 million investment is the largest in the ADDF Diagnostics Accelerator's history, it noted. Fremont, California-based Alamar previously raised $128 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding round last year.