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Alzheimer’s disease could be diagnosed up to a decade earlier after the world’s largest study of proteins was completed.
The research, which begins in the UK this month, aims to pinpoint how diseases develop to pave the way for blood tests to detect cancer and dementia years before doctors diagnose them.
Experimental data from the new project has allowed researchers to identify elevated proteins in patients who develop dementia up to a decade before diagnosis and up to seven years before some cancers are diagnosed.
UK Biobank’s pharmaceutical proteomics project could be a “vital piece of the puzzle for scientists”, with the potential to transform healthcare by the end of the decade, experts suggest.
Professor Sir Rory Collins, principal investigator and chief executive of UK Biobank, said: “The data collected in this study will allow scientists around the world to carry out health-related research and investigate how lifestyle, environment and genetics influence proteins through It leads to some developing people. Certain diseases, while others are not.
“This allows us to identify who it is, who is likely to develop the disease before they develop it, and then we can look at ways to prevent those conditions before they develop.”
The study allows researchers to determine how genes, lifestyle and environment cause disease through changes in protein levels in the blood.
It is also possible that blood tests will be developed to more quickly and accurately diagnose autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.
Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins, their role in disease and how their structure and function cause disease.
Science Secretary Lord Patrick Vallance hailed the plan as having the “potential to open up a new era of possibilities”.
The project is an extension of a ground-breaking pilot program that released data on almost 3,000 proteins from blood samples from 54,000 UK Biobank participants.
The major project – supported by a consortium of 14 pharmaceutical companies – aims to measure up to 5,400 proteins from 600,000 blood samples.
This includes samples taken 15 to 20 years ago, when the UK Biobank study began, from 500,000 people in their early 40s to late 60s, as well as a second sample taken from 100,000 UK Biobank volunteers 10 to 15 years later. became.
UK Biobank Chief Scientist Professor Naomi Allen said: “Experimental data shows that certain proteins are elevated in people who develop various types of cancer up to seven years before they are clinically diagnosed. and for dementia, up to 10 years before clinical diagnosis.
It may indeed be possible to develop simple blood tests that can detect disease much earlier than is currently the case.
For example, in the case of dementia, you could imagine that if we had a blood test that measured these handful of proteins that are specifically elevated in people who later develop Alzheimer’s disease, they would benefit from new drugs. they profit which are on the market and are specifically designed to treat the disease in its early stages.
It is understood that tens of millions of pounds of investment are being provided by a group of pharmaceutical companies, including the likes of Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and GSK.
The funding will initially support scientists to measure protein levels in 300,000 samples – expected to take around 12 months – with the data made available to researchers from 2026 to be approved by the UK Biobank.
The full dataset is expected to be added to the UK Biobank research analysis platform by 2027.
