NIH Awards Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy Grant to Amydis Diagnostics
San Diego, CA, October 9, 2017: Amydis Diagnostics, Inc., a privately-held pharmaceutical company developing proprietary chemistry and innovative approaches for the detection of amyloid-related diseases, announced today that they received a Phase 1 SBIR grant award from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant award for more than $530,000 will fund research and development efforts for novel ophthalmic diagnostic probes for Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy (CAA), an age-associated disease in which proteins called amyloid build up on the walls of the arteries in the brain increasing the risk for stroke caused by bleeding, and dementia.
“We are honored to have been selected for this highly competitive grant from NIH, our third award in the past three years. It will allow us to accelerate the development of our innovative chemistry and expand into another disease that involves the presence of amyloid proteins”, stated Stella Sarraf, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Amydis Diagnostics, Inc. “We believe that the eye represents a window to the brain and can be used as a proxy for diagnosing certain neurological diseases. To our knowledge, we are the first company to explore the possibility of detecting amyloid proteins in the retina associated with CAA.”
CAA is a major cause of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage in people older than 55 and an important contributor to age-related cognitive decline. Physicians are unable to diagnosis CAA with certainty without a sample of brain tissue. Current diagnosis of CAA involves expensive imaging tests such as MRI, CT scans, and PET amyloid tests. The development of a non-invasive ophthalmic amyloid test would be of value to physicians. “A retinal test for CAA will enable physicians to take better care of patients by avoiding medications contraindicated in this disease, thereby decreasing their likelihood of having a hemorrhagic stroke,” said Scott Reines, MD PhD, Chief Medical Officer of Amydis. “Such a test would also be extremely useful as an outcome marker in clinical trials focused on therapies for CAA that could stop or reverse progression of the disease by preventing vascular amyloid deposition.”
Disclosure
Research reported in this grant publication is supported by the National Institute On Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R43AG058350. The content is solely the responsibility of the Company and Principal Investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Amydis
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
