Ixico to receive €1m from EU Alzheimer's project

AIM-listed pharmaceutical Ixico is to receive €1m as a partner in an EU public-private consortium, which has the potential for long-term revenue through the development of diagnostic and disease management technologies for Alzheimer's.

Ixico is to work on the Amyloid Imaging to Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease (AMYPAD) initiative with academic, healthcare and pharmaceutical partners, including GE Healthcare, Piramal Imaging and Janssen Pharmaceutica JPNV, who will investigate the use of amyloid brain scans to improve the diagnosis and management of Alzheimer's.

The company will receive €1m over the life of the project for its partners to use its TrialTracker platform, which will collect 6,000 amyloid PET (positron emission tomography) scans from clinical centres across Europe, and the Assessa platform, which will be used to analyse the PET data with other data from patients to help identify people who could benefit from the Alzheimer's clinical trials.

Dr Gill Farrar, AMYPAD project leader and scientific director at GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: "AMYPAD will apply amyloid PET on an unprecedented scale to patients who are suspected to be in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and generate the knowledge to fully integrate PET β-amyloid markers into current clinical practice in a cost-efficient way, by demonstrating its diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic value from a multi-stakeholder perspective."

The project will use the European-wide register of 24,000 patients created by the European Prevention of Alzheimer's Dementia Initiative, which Ixico is also a partner of.

Chief executive Derek Hill, said: "Our involvement in the AMYPAD project demonstrates not only our continued success in deploying our key technology platforms across major neurodegenerative disease indications, including our collaboration with Biogen and clinical centres in multiple sclerosis, but also our longstanding reputation and experience in Alzheimer's disease.”

Shares Ixico were down 1.96% to 24.51p at 1238 BST.