This application, Imaging Software of Functional Connectivity MRI for Alzheimer's Disease, is written in response to (PA-11-134) Lab to Marketplace: Tools for Brain and Behavioral Research (SBIR [R43/R44]). Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. However, developing drugs that effectively slow or alter the course of Alzheimer's disease has proven to be notoriously difficult. Academic and pharmaceutical scientists believe that a large part of the problem is that they are testing these drugs at the late stage in the progression of the disease, when damage to the brain is too severe to make intervention effective. Therefore, commercial AD biomarkers for early detection are of paramount importance in analyzing disease progression, yielding an accurate diagnosis and providing efficacy assessment following treatment in clinical trials and drug discovery. The goal of this SBIR Phase II application is to commercialize innovative neuroimaging technology tool, called Resting-state functional connectivity MRI (R-fcMRI), for the marketplace based on a decade of Alzheimer's research progress supported by the National Institues of Health in the laboratory of Shi-Jiang Li, Ph.D., and Alzheimer's Disease NeuroImaging Initiative (ADNI 2) program, and other neuroimaging labs. We will retrospectively and prospectively collect R-fcMRI imaging datasets from national and international multicenter studies to validate our commercial BS-GFC software product in order to provide a robust and reliable biomarker for assisting in the prediction of AD onset, diagnosis and assessment of treatment efficacy.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. As many as 5.3 million Americans are suffering from Alzheimer disease (AD), and it costs the country around $148 billion a year to provide care. Today, it is the sixth leading cause of death and is expected to rise as the Baby Boomer generation ages. That figure is expected to balloon worldwide in the coming decades. However, it has been notoriously difficult to develop drugs that effectively slow or alter the course of Alzheimer's disease, because of the lack of commercial AD biomarkers that have the potential for early disease detection, accurate diagnosis and efficacy assessment in following treatment in clinical trials and drug discovery. The goal of this SBIR Phase II application is commercializing innovative neuroimaging technology tools, called Resting-state functional connectivity MRI (R-fcMRI), for the marketplace based on a decade of research progress in Alzheimer's disease research supported by the National Institue of Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in the laboratory of Si-Jiang Li, Ph.D., and renewed Alzheimer's Disease NeuroImaging Initiative (ADNI 2) program and other neuroimaging labs. We will retrospectively and prospectively collect MRI/fcMRI imaging datasets from national and international multicenter studies to validate our commercial BS-GFC software product in order to provide a robust and reliable biomarker for assisting in the prediction of AD onset, diagnosis and assessment of treatment efficacy.
| Shu, Hao; Shi, Yongmei; Chen, Gang et al. (2018) Distinct neural correlates of episodic memory among apolipoprotein E alleles in cognitively normal elderly. Brain Imaging Behav : |
| Chen, Guangyu; Shu, Hao; Chen, Gang et al. (2016) Staging Alzheimer's Disease Risk by Sequencing Brain Function and Structure, Cerebrospinal Fluid, and Cognition Biomarkers. J Alzheimers Dis 54:983-993 |
| Li, Wenjun; Antuono, Piero G; Xie, Chunming et al. (2014) Aberrant functional connectivity in Papez circuit correlates with memory performance in cognitively intact middle-aged APOE4 carriers. Cortex 57:167-76 |
