Padideh

There is no cure because there is no "early detection". By the time of current clinical diagnosis (when symptoms appear), the disease has progressed to advanced stages and it's too late for any effective treatment. Our goal is to help pharma companies develop novel drug candidates that can potentially cure the disease "if detected early using our technology". Also, life style modifications are known to delay the symptoms. So knowing is always the best.

Exactly.

Many people are interested to know the status of their brain health -- the same way as they can have health screen for other organs -- and they are interested to be able to track the status of their brain tissue over time to see whether a lifestyle modification they tried actually did have a beneficial effect on the brain or not.

Arguably, there will be no viable treatment unless asymptomatic volunteers get tested with our software so they can enroll in a clinical trail, so why defer the test?

Correct. Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia (~80%). There are other dementia's such as FTD (frontotemporal dementia), DLB (dementia with Lewy body), vascular dementia, etc.

This is not a machine learning algorithm, so no training is required. The software processes every MRI scan (a full set acquired in one session) independently of other scans. The algorithm quantifies microscopic structural distortion at every voxel (3D pixel) of the MRI. Statistical models can be used on a population, but only to test the performance of the algorithm, not to train it.

You are absolutely right. The definitive test to confirm Alzheimer's pathology in the brain is by autopsy, however there are pretty extensive clinical tests available that get very close to the diagnosis. The accuracy of our software is determined by testing a population of people with clinical Alzheimer's disease, against their age-matched normal controls.

Thanks a lot!

There are many tests to tell you the risk of developing dementia, which is only a "probability" number. Darmiyan's brain maps show (and measure) the actual pathology (neurodegeneration) in the brain, at microscopic resolution.

There is currently no other method to detect and quantify micro-structural abnormality in the brain at presymptomatic stages of dementia, which is one of the main reasons why all clinical trials of Alzheimer's test drugs keep failing, one after another.

We got access to MRI scans from numerous people with Alzheimer's disease or MCI (mild cognitive impairment) who happened to have an MRI scan up to 15 years ago, when they were still cognitively healthy, and our software detects abnormality in those older scans with a very high accuracy.

Regarding your second question/comment, we have just launched, and you are absolutely right, there is no reason not to choose our product. The biggest challenge is the huge skepticism in the medical community towards any novel technology related to Alzheimer's disease, given all prior failed big claims by others.

Lifestyle changes such as regular exercise, better sleep and better nutrition are shown to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's dementia later in life. Also, when a disease-modifying treatment is found, the person who knows the status of their brain health will be the one to benefit most from the treatment before developing symptoms. Once symptoms of cognitive decline show up, it may be too late to intervene.

Thank so much for your kind sentiments. Much appreciated. Darmiyan team is definitely committed to making a positive impact by mitigating the burden of neurodegenerative diseases on millions of families.