Prion diseases are a class of neurological disorders similar to Alzheimer?s disease that are fatal, transmissible, and affect both humans and animals. The most common human prion disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is sometimes called the great mimicker because it causes symptoms that occur in many other neurological diseases like Alzheimer?s Disease. Similar to Alzheimer?s disease, early and accurate testing of CJD is necessary to distinguish this untreatable disease from treatable rapidly progressive dementias. Common symptoms of CJD, like Alzheimer?s disease, include behavioral and personality changes, confusion and memory problems, lack of coordination, and visual disturbances. Interestingly, recent reports have indicated prion proteins in post-mortem retinal tissue of CJD patients similar to reports in the literature in Alzheimer?s Disease patients. Amydis is developing an innovative new approach to diagnosing amyloid associated diseases like Alzheimer?s disease and CJD by way of an eye exam. The proposed research will result in a noninvasive screening test for detecting prions in the eye, as a window to the brain, for early detection of CJD an analogous approach to our initial program in Alzheimer?s disease. In addition, this test will be utilized by hospitals to reduce the potential transmission of the disease to other patients like patients with Alzheimer?s Disease undergoing neurological tests. Amydis has designed its technology to use existing ophthalmic instrumentation thereby allowing for an easy transition into commercial practice by physicians.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) is characterized by the deposition of insoluble protein aggregates in the brain that are referred to as amyloids. Recently, these amyloids have been identified in retinal tissue in diseased individuals. The proposed research aims to advance a non-invasive, diagnostic to image amyloid-deposits through the eye.
