Alzheimer’s could be diagnosed 10 years earlier after world’s largest blood proteins study
UK based project could pave way for blood tests to detect diseases years before diagnosis
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Your support makes all the difference.Alzhemier’s disease could be diagnosed up to a decade earlier after the world’s biggest study of proteins is completed.
The research, which will begin in the UK this month, will aim to pinpoint how diseases develops to pave a way for blood tests to detect the likes of cancer and dementia years before they are diagnosed by doctors.
Pilot data from the new project has has already allowed researchers to identify elevated proteins in patients who go on to develop dementia up to a decade before diagnosis and seven years before the diagnosis of certain cancers.
The UK Biobank Pharma Proteomics Project could be a “crucial piece in the jigsaw puzzle for scientists”, experts suggest, with the potential to transform healthcare by the end of the decade.
Professor Sir Rory Collins, principal investigator and chief executive of UK Biobank, said: “The data collected in the study will allow scientists around the world to conduct health-related research, exploring how lifestyle, environment and genetics lead through proteins to some people developing particular diseases, while others do not.
“That will allow us to identify who it is, who’s likely to develop disease well before they do, and we can then look at ways in which to prevent those conditions before they develop.”
The study will allow researchers to determine how genes, lifestyle and environment cause illness through changes in protein levels in the blood.
There is also the possibility for blood tests to be created to diagnose autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease faster and more accurately.
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, analysing their role in disease and how their structure and function cause illnesses.
Science minister Lord Patrick Vallance hailed the plan as having the “potential to unlock a new era of possibilities”.
The project is an expansion of a revolutionary pilot programme which published data on almost 3,000 proteins from blood samples of 54,000 UK Biobank participants.
The scaled-up project – backed by a consortium of 14 pharmaceutical firms – will aim to measure up to 5,400 proteins from 600,000 blood samples.
This includes samples taken 15 to 20 years ago, when the UK Biobank study started, from 500,000 people in their early 40s to late 60s, as well as second samples taken from 100,000 UK Biobank volunteers 10 to 15 years later.
Professor Naomi Allen, chief scientist at UK Biobank, said: “The pilot data is already showing that specific proteins are elevated in those who go on to develop many different types of cancers up to seven years before a clinical diagnosis is made. And for dementia, up to 10 years before clinical diagnosis is made.
“It really might be possible to develop simple blood tests that can detect disease much earlier than currently exists.
“For example, in the case of dementia, you can imagine that if we had a blood test that measures this handful of proteins that are specifically elevated in those who will later go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease, they would then benefit from taking new drugs that are on the market and specifically designed to treat early stage disease.
It is understood tens of millions of pounds in investment is being provided by the group of pharma firms, which includes the likes of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and GSK.
The funding will initially support scientists to measure protein levels from 300,000 samples – expected to take about 12 months – with this data made available to UK Biobank approved researchers in staggered releases from 2026.
The full dataset is expected to be added to the UK Biobank Research Analysis Platform by 2027.
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