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C2N, WUSTL Expand Partnership to Commercialize Alzheimer's Test

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – C2N Diagnostics today announced the expansion of a partnership with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to commercialize a clinical blood test for the detection of Alzheimer's disease at its earliest stages, as well as mild cognitive impairment.

C2N has acquired the exclusive worldwide commercial rights to technologies developed by Randall Bateman and David Holtzman, professors of neurology at WUSTL's School of Medicine and the co-founders of C2N. The technologies build on a platform developed at the school and already marketed by C2N called Stable Isotope Labeling Kinetics (SILK). C2N said the new technologies enable a new approach to measure the metabolism of brain-derived proteins associated with Alzheimer's and MCI, allowing for the detection of metabolic biomarkers in a patient's blood sample, rather than relying on cerebrospinal fluid, which requires more invasive methods for sampling.

For the past six years, C2N has been using its mass spectrometry-based SILK-Aß test to measure the kinetics of beta-amyloid in cerebrospinal fluid, and with a simplified version of the test that uses blood samples, "we now have an opportunity to validate a unique therapeutic and diagnostic marker," C2N CEO Joel Braunstein said in a statement.

"We plan to achieve this validation by collaborating with pharmaceutical companies that are testing their compounds" in Phase II and Phase III clinical studies, as well as by participating in studies tracking the progression of Alzheimer's, he said. "If successful, we expect to be able to offer a reliable and informative screening test that is also convenient for patients."

Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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