Dr Bharadwai
A national grant has been awarded to Edith Cowan University's Dr Prashant Bharadwaj to develop a new blood test that could detect and monitor dementia, with a focus on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).
The National Foundation for Medical Research and Innovation has partnered with The Mason Foundation to provide $250,000 over the next two years to Dr Bharadwaj and collaborators from Macquarie University, Australian Genomic Research Facility and Proteomics International.
The team will aim to develop the blood test to improve diagnosis and treatment of neurological conditions, by identifying specific proteins in the blood.
"Currently, the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is difficult, expensive, and there are no reliable biological indicators of the disease," Dr Bharadwaj said.
"AD shares symptoms with other ageing neurological diseases and childhood dementia, however there is no reliable, non-invasive, or cost-effective method to assess neurodegeneration in different neurological diseases.
"This can result in AD being misdiagnosed or undetected. A widely accessible and reliable blood test could help alleviate some of these issues, by improving how it’s diagnosed, how the disease is progressing and whether treatments are effective."
Dr Bharadwaj said the neurofilament light (NFL) protein has been shown to be a good indicator of brain degeneration and would be an area of focus.
"NFL variants in AD blood appear to be different compared to healthy individuals," he said.
"This project aims to characterize these variants in different types of dementias and determine if specific variants are associated with AD pathology."
