Spear Bio expands Alzheimer’s biomarker portfolio with novel epTau 217 and eMTBR-Tau assays, supported by a fully automated workflow

Speaker 1: Oliver Tassinari, VP, Business Development & Sales, Spear Bio

We're really excited to be here at AAIC where we're launching our fully automated S.W.I.F.T.™ solution, which allows for hands-free automation of the SPEAR UltraDetect™ and TrueDetect™ platforms. We're also here to launch eMTBR, the first singleplex amino assay for tau pathology in plasma.

At Spear, we are very focused on developing assays for clinical research, specifically assays that can offer high reliability and reproducibility, which is important to the researchers to better understand the underlying pathologies that they're researching. Our focus in assay development is on markers that don't have a good solution right now, specifically. for biofluid biomarker detection, specifically in plasma. So as we move forward, our pipeline is focused on areas of research that customers are looking for, whether it's tau pathology, TDP proteinopathy, synucleinopathy – areas of research that don't have good immunoassay-based solutions.

And we're excited to be here at AAIC and learn from our customers, researchers, and pharmaceutical companies, what their critical needs are in order to go back to the lab and develop the facilities they need.

Speaker 2: Dr. Thomas Karikari, Director, Biomarker and Neurogenetics Core, University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

One of the reasons why it is important to measure multiple biomarker candidates in a disease as complex as Alzheimer's disease is how multifaceted the different strands of biology that happens in a disease, because you have to look at it from multiple views. And by looking at, for example, typhus relation, which we know that the levels of which really track with amyloid-driven neurodegeneration, we get to really see what is happening from the amyloid side. And as we know at autopsy, you don't only have amyloid being a big characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. The other major player is tau pathology in terms of tangles. And then we now have to look out for biomarkers of machine tangles.

So by looking at these two from the same side, from the same sample set, we're able to understand, one, that someone truly has Alzheimer's disease with looking at those two biological correlates and two we can then be able to stage that at what stage of the disease can one can we see one in.

So when it comes to the eMTBR which you know is now the newest kid on the block when it comes to the blood biomarkers, it is extremely fascinating. For a long time it looked like that was evasive we couldn't measure it and with the methods really being created the technology becoming you know pushing it to the next level seems that now we're able to do that which is extremely exciting for the field.

Now with data we have what the eMTBR reveals, where the other markers are not able to include an absolute measure of tau tangles so with data we have when we compare with tau pathology measured by tau pet or with autopsy in individuals who have gone into autopsy and have actually had measures of tangles done by pathologists in the neurodegenerative assessment, what we see is that the eMTBR, measuring blood samples collected could be years even before death, really tracks.

They have very good measurement, a very good agreement with the amount of tau pathology, the tau tangle pathology, the tau aggregate pathology in the brains of these individuals and highly predictive also in individuals who took imaging, like went through tau PET imaging. So with these two being sort of the gold standards of tangle pathology, when you have tau PET or if you have autopsy, we're able to show that eMTBR have very good correlation and very good predictive power of these markers. And you don't see the same for other markers like phospho-tau.

In terms of potential of Spear Bio's assay panel and how they're actually helping to move the field from one level to the other. I feel like they're enormous in terms of one, for example, that with the different panels that are continuing to come through with, like, you know, the portfolio in terms of, you know, now they've got amyloid markers, they've got neurodegeneration markers, now they've got tau tangle markers, they've got inflammation markers. And so all these things are helping to address the multifaceted nature of Alzheimer's disease, which is by recommendation of diagnostic criteria.