A new study analysing 80,000 UK Biobank blood samples is being initiated to chart the earliest biological changes associated with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
The findings will create one of the largest resources of its kind to support discoveries that could lead to earlier detection and better treatments for the conditions.
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Co-led by health technology companies Alamar Biosciences and Nightingale Health, the UK-PRISM study will be conducted in Nightingale’s laboratories using Alamar’s NULISA – a platform purpose-built for the detection of low-abundance proteins.
Under the study, NULISA will measure hundreds of circulating protein biomarkers in 80,000 blood samples from UK Biobank participants. The UK Biobank is a large-scale, long-term biomedical database and research resource that tracks the health and aging of approximately half a million volunteer participants in the UK.
Funded by partners including Alzheimer’s Research UK and LifeArc and due for completion by the end of 2027, the study’s findings are expected to result in the creation one of the world’s largest open-access resource for understanding the early molecular indicators of neurodegeneration. Eligible researchers will be able to access the full dataset upon the study’s completion.
Commenting on the study, Alamar’s founder and CEO, Yuling Luo, said: “For decades, the earliest biology of neurodegeneration has been out of reach in blood because the proteins that matter most are present in such small amounts. NULISA was designed to change that.
“Working with Nightingale and UK Biobank, we can now measure those signals across tens of thousands of people, years before symptoms appear, and give researchers everywhere a new way to ask when and why these diseases begin.”
In Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, growing research suggests that biological changes may begin years before patients receive a formal diagnosis for either condition.
By measuring certain proteins long before symptoms emerge, Alamar and Nightingale assert that their study creates a “rare opportunity” to understand Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as overlapping conditions, with shared biological roots – a factor growing research suggests – in order to identify the earliest molecular signals when intervention is still possible.
“Understanding how the brain stays healthy as we age is one of the biggest challenges in medical research. Proteins play a vital role in this process, helping to repair tissue, regulate inflammation and support countless functions throughout the body. Yet we still know relatively little about how they work together to influence brain health,” commented Dr Adam Lewandowski, deputy chief scientist at UK Biobank.
“Made possible by the generosity of our participants, these new data will provide an invaluable snapshot of the proteins associated with brain health decades before conditions such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease are diagnosed,” Lewandowski continued.
Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia affect more than 55 million people globally and are on track to nearly triple by 2050. Meanwhile, Parkinson’s disease, the world’s fastest-growing neurological disorder, affects more than 12 million people today and is projected to exceed 25 million by 2050, as per analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI).
