STTR Phase I: Saliva Screening Test for Alzheimer’s Disease

这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力需要开发一种简单且负担得起的基于唾液的测试，该测试将能够检测早期阿尔茨海默病。今天，没有单一的测试可以确定一个人是否患有阿尔茨海默病。由于诊断是复杂的，侵入性的，昂贵的，这些测试只进行一次症状，如记忆丧失，开始表现。阿尔茨海默病的这些症状只有在疾病已经对大脑造成重大损害时才会变得明显。该测试将广泛使用，并在症状出现之前检测疾病，使患者能够开始积极的预防策略，甚至治疗以保持大脑健康。随着美国人口老龄化--到2060年，近四分之一的美国人将年满65岁或以上--阿尔茨海默病和其他痴呆症正在成为健康和社会保健的一个巨大挑战。作为广泛的预防方法的一部分，这项技术可能会将早期阿尔茨海默病的护理扩展到数百万美国人，使干预，监测和治疗开始比目前可能的时间早几年。这个小企业技术转让（STTR）第一阶段项目正在应用复杂的化学分析方法开发一种新的测试，使用一个人的唾液检测早期阿尔茨海默病的迹象。疾病会导致体液（如血液或唾液）的生化成分发生变化。使用基于光散射的现代高灵敏度光谱法，并将其与先进的统计方法（即，机器学习），该项目正在开发一种方法，可以可靠地检测唾液中特定于阿尔茨海默病的生化变化。该项目旨在通过展示其区分健康个体捐赠的唾液与从阿尔茨海默病患者在轻度和中度疾病阶段收集的唾液的能力来证明该方法的可行性。该项目还将调查是否已知的生物标志物阿尔茨海默氏症正在确定这种方法和开发统计方法来解释光谱数据。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project entails the development of a simple and affordable saliva-based test that will enable the detection of early Alzheimer's disease. Today, there is no single test that can determine if a person has Alzheimer's disease. Because the diagnosis is complex, invasive, and expensive, these tests are only performed once symptoms, such as memory loss, begin to manifest. These symptoms of Alzheimer's disease only become apparent once the disease has already cause significant damage to the brain. The proposed test will be widely accessible and detect the disease before symptoms arise, enabling the patient to start active prevention strategies and even therapies to preserve brain health. As the American population ages — nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be 65 years of age or older by 2060 — Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are becoming a great challenge for health and social care. As part of a broad approach to prevention, this technology can potentially extend early Alzheimer’s care to millions of Americans, allowing interventions, monitoring, and treatment initiation years earlier than what is currently possible.This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is applying sophisticated chemical analysis methods to develop a novel test to detect signs of early Alzheimer’s disease using a person’s saliva. Diseases can cause changes in the biochemical composition of body fluids such as blood or saliva. Using a modern, highly sensitive type of spectroscopy based on light scattering, and combining it with advanced statistical approaches (i.e., machine learning), this project is developing a method that can reliably detect biochemical changes in saliva specific to Alzheimer’s disease. This project aims to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach by showing its ability to distinguish saliva donated by healthy individuals from saliva collected from Alzheimer's patients at both mild and moderate stages of the disease. The project will also investigate whether known biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease are being identified by this method and develop statistical approaches to interpret spectroscopic data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.