Amydis Awarded Prion Disease Grant from NIH
San Diego, CA, September 26, 2018: Amydis, Inc., a privately-held pharmaceutical company developing proprietary chemistry and innovative technology to detect amyloid-related diseases, announced today that they received a grant award from The National Institute of Health (NIH) to develop a novel diagnostic for prion disease. A prion, derived from “protein” and “infectious”, causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in people. CJD is a degenerative and fatal brain disorder that is a public health concern due to the risk of transmission. Several U.S. hospitals have reported possible inadvertent exposure of prion disease to other patients through contaminated instruments during brain surgeries.
Amydis is developing a simple test to screen and detect prions in the eye of all patients before brain surgery to help diagnose CJD. The Amydis test will not only help prevent accidental exposure to this infectious disease, but also reduce misdiagnosis by distinguishing treatable progressive dementias from CJD.
“It is an honor to receive this highly competitive grant from the NIH,” stated Stella Sarraf, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Amydis. “The continued support of the NIH with this fourth grant award speaks to the innovation of our technology and our expertise in exploring the eye as the window to the brain to diagnose neurological diseases. By expanding the use of our platform to the orphan disease, CJD, we help address yet another unmet medical need.”
CJD, also called the “great mimicker”, can cause symptoms that occur in many other neurological conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, making diagnosis difficult.
Michael Geschwind, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Neurology at the Memory and Aging Center, University of California San Francisco and a world leading authority on CJD and other prion diseases said, “I am excited to collaborate with the Amydis team and help get this test into the clinic. I see a need for Amydis’ objective test to diagnose CJD to help determine a proper diagnosis, ending the need for extensive, expensive testing to determine cause of patient’s symptoms. As we are in the era of treatment trials, this type of test will be even more important when treatments are available that can slow or stop the progression of these terrible diseases.”
About Amydis
Amydis is leading the way for early detection of diseases through the eye that is accessible, affordable and non-invasive. The company is developing proprietary ocular tracers that enable identification of molecular biomarkers for diseases of the eye, heart and brain. Amydis is creating a data warehouse for multi-omics that includes unique molecular biomarkers of the eye to empower AI-enabled health insights. The Company’s digital health solutions leverage the eye as the “window to the body” to accelerate diagnoses, enable precision treatment and improve patient outcomes. For more information contact: info@amydis.com
