A company hopes to market in September 2019 the first blood test to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease. A revolution for the medical profession.
Are we moving towards a revolution to better fight against Alzheimer’s ? Founded in 2007, the company Firalis located in the Great East at Huningue (Haut-Rhin) south of Mulhouse on the French-Swiss border is preparing to market the first blood test for the diagnosis of this disease.
250,000 new patients every year in France
An advance that could revolutionise its screening and anticipate its management.
“Every year, there are at least 250,000 new patients in France,” says Florian Still, responsible for the development of this company of about fifty employees. As it reaches more and more people, the company has decided to believe in the development of its new blood test. This already exists for the self-test deployed to identify HIV:
“The current diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease remains very uncertain and relies in particular on a very painful lumbar puncture. There is also the use of MRI. It is long and expensive … The tests carried out in the hospitals after consultation of a neurologist are also not completely reliable. We hope to approach 100% with the blood test.”
“The answer in an hour”
The researchers want to launch the commercialization of this test in September 2019 . “It is currently being tested in a clinical study involving 1,000 patients in 13 European centers,” explains Mr. Still.
“It will cost around 600 euros per test and per patient. Currently, the device to confirm the disease is about 2,000 euros and it is not entirely reliable. It is hoped that the Social Security will take charge of it in order to generalize the system. It will first be available in hospitals. “
The answer is expected after an hour after pouring a very small amount of blood. “It’s only 5 microliters,” says Florian Still. “For the moment, there is still no treatment for the disease but the sooner we take charge, the better for the patient,” says the development manager.
A participatory fundraiser for development
Firalis also hopes to raise funds from the public to advance its research on the disease more quickly. The company has already raised 180,000 euros via the participative platform happycapital . The goal is to raise 400,000 euros online by the end of February.
“We have been working on this project for five years now. The clinical study stops in March and we still have to develop algorithms to obtain the finest results. We hope to get a marketing authorization by the end of the year, September at best.
Worldwide, 47 million patients have Alzheimer’s disease, according to France Alzheimer . From day to day, the disease is gaining ground and by 2020, our country will probably have 1,275,000 sick people, including one French in four over 65 years.
