Nanoprobes for Earlier Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

University of Twente, in collaboration with Syncom and Crossbeta Biosciences, and with support from Alzheimer Nederland, will develop highly sensitive silicon nanoparticles to image the brain and to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease in earlier stages.

Despite tremendous progress in medical imaging, early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is still not possible. Although promising strategies have been developed to image plaque formation in the brain and observe deterioration of brain function, this is typically still in a late stage, while the imaging is not entirely harmless and can typically only be carried out a few times on a patient. This severely hampers disease understanding and complicates treatment. More sensitive and risk-free imaging agents would greatly improve the imaging of the brain and facilitate the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

We will develop silicon nanoparticles as a highly sensitive imaging agent to image the brain and specifically detect plaque formation. Together with the company Syncom, we will connect groups onto the silicon nanoparticles that can find indicators of Alzheimer’s disease. Crossbeta Biosciences will provide us with their proprietary plaque targeting agents. Our studies are aimed at gaining better understanding of brain diseases and ultimately earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.