Perceptive’s Alzheimer’s imaging aims to cut costs

Aging populations in many Western countries have expanded the potential market for Alzheimer’s treatments and Perceptive believes its new imaging methodology can assist in this search.

The imaging technique uses a novel method to measure ventricular change, which Perceptive believes accurately reflects brain atrophy, to provide users with information to make better and quicker development decisions.

Kenneth Faulkner, vice president of medical imaging at Perceptive Informatics, said: "It is more critical than ever that biopharmaceutical companies have the ability to make accurate go/no go decisions as early as possible for new compounds​.

“Medical imaging is increasingly being used as a surrogate endpoint or biomarker of drug efficacy in all phases of CNS trials. With this new methodology, we believe that Perceptive's therapeutic area experts are able to help sponsors advance neuroimaging and bring important CNS treatments to patients sooner​."

Forming the methodology​

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Perceptive developed the methodology using Medical Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). Analysing this suggested that measuring ventricular change provides the most robust way of assessing Alzheimer’s progression.

This understanding formed the basis of the medical imaging methodology, which Perceptive believes can reduce the time, risk and costs associated with clinical development of Alzheimer's treatments.

James Paskavitz, medical director at Perceptive added that the image data “informs early phase decisions and is reproducible for later phase, multi-centre trials​”.