Genentech pours cold water on blood test for Alzheimer’s screening

Cutting through the excitement at CTAD about the potential of amyloid blood tests to improve clinical trials and patient care in Alzheimer’s was a cautionary tale from Genentech laying out why the most studied plasma biomarker may not be robust enough for use as a screening tool.

Patient recruitment is a major bottleneck in Alzheimer’s disease trials, and current methods of screening patients for inclusion are expensive, invasive and require specialized facilities not readily accessible by many patients. PET imaging of amyloid plaques in the brain is the gold standard, with cerebrospinal fluid analysis considered an acceptable stand-in...