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313,138
2024-02-01 to 2025-01-31
Collaborative R&D
Quantified Imaging (QI) will develop software to measure quantitative dementia biomarkers from non-invasive arterial spin labelling MRI in clinical trials. Arterial spin labelling (ASL) is a type of MRI that runs on unmodified hospital scanners to measure blood flow in the brain. As changes in blood flow are one of the earliest known markers of dementia, ASL yields a variety of biomarkers that are especially sensitive to early-stage disease. Compared to the current gold-standard for dementia imaging, FDG-PET, ASL shows similar sensitivity to early-stage disease, and similar specificity to differentiate subtypes, but at 20% of the cost, in half the scan time, and without any injection or radiation exposure. Alongside the fact that MRI scanners are much more widely available than PET, this makes an ASL a scalable and cost-effective modality for imaging dementia biomarkers in clinical trials, which meets the exact requirements of this competition. QI is a spin-out from the University of Nottingham who have developed the world's foremost software for processing ASL images to extract quantitative biomarkers, without radiologist reporting. Our technology is used as the gold-standard throughout academic research into dementia, notably by the three largest ongoing studies into the ageing brain, each of which numbers thousands of subjects, and which demonstrates the maturity of our technology (TRL6). Following extensive market research into the clinical trials sector funded by a six-month ICURe incubator, we know there is demand from a variety of contract research organisations and pharma companies for us to re-package our academic software into a trials-specific solution. Such a product would build on our world-leading capabilities to dramatically simplify the ASL workflow in trials, thereby reducing the skills and cost barriers that currently hinder wider adoption. Our imaging solution will play a complementary role alongside emerging wet biomarker tests. Not only can it be used to provide diagnostic validation of wet biomarkers - at a scale and cost that would not be attainable with PET - but it can be part of the diagnostic pathway that is ultimately adopted for dementia. Only imaging offers a direct insight into the physical effects of disease on the brain, and hence progression, as well as treatment response.