• Organized by Merck
• Date Tue. (Sep. 24) 12:40 ~ 14:30
• Room 211, 2F
• Title Quantification of Low Abundant Neurodegenerative Biomarkers in Blood using MILLIPLEX® and SMC™ High Sensitivity Immunoassays
• Speaker MICHAEL GODENY, Ph.D. MBA Head of MILLIPLEX Reagent Portfolio

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) have become more prevalent worldwide as the population ages. Quantification of protein biomarkers in patients with AD and Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is important for monitoring disease progression. Monitoring neurodegenerative biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has led to much of our current understanding of AD. However, due to the invasive nature of collecting CSF samples, new blood biomarkers are needed. Here we report our results from screening biomarkers most commonly associated with neurodegenerative diseases using both MILLIPLEX® multiplex immunoassays for CSF screening and Single Molecule Counting (SMC™) high sensitivity immunoassays for serum and plasma screening. CSF samples from normal versus AD patients displayed significant differences in Aβ42, phosphorylated Tau, GFAP, NSE, PRNP and NRGN levels. However, many of these neurodegenerative disease biomarkers are not detectable in some blood samples due to low abundance and thus require higher sensitivity immunoassays. For example, our MILLIPLEX assays for Aβ42 detect these peptides in CSF but lack the sensitivity for measurement in blood. To this end, we developed SMCTM Aβ40 and Aβ42 immunoassay kits that can accurately quantitate Aβ40 and Aβ42 levels in human, mouse, and rat blood samples. Using this high sensitivity technology, Aβ40, but not Aβ42, was shown to have significant correlation to AD plasma samples. In summary, SMC™ high sensitivity immunoassay kits can provide a powerful less invasive biomarker tool in studying the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

* Pre-registration: http://bit.ly/merck_luncheon