Neie Bluttest fir d'Alzheimer Krankheet virauszesoen

Diadem SpA today announced the closing of the first tranche of a €10 million equity financing. The financing round is led by new investor CDP Venture Capital and existing investor Panakès Partners. The new funding follows the announcement earlier this month by Diadem and the European Investment Bank (EIB) that EIB has granted Diadem a €7.5 million venture loan.

Diadem will use the new funding to continue the global commercialisation and further clinical validation of its AlzoSure® Predict, a non-invasive biomarker blood test that can identify with high accuracy whether individuals over the age of 50 with signs of cognitive impairment will or will not progress to Alzheimer’s disease up to six years before definitive symptoms are apparent. Its utility is supported by clinical data from a large longitudinal study that was the basis for AlzoSure® Predict’s recently gaining a CE-IVD mark and a Breakthrough Device designation from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration.

“Diadem is an excellent example of innovative enterprise: a unique technology, developed at the University of Brescia, an advanced research center, and offering the opportunity of intervening in the very early stages of the pathological process, when the chances of success of the intervention are greater,” comments Enrico Resmini, CEO and General Manager of CDP Venture Capital. “We are very satisfied with our investment in Diadem, which also meets our criteria of social impact and stimulation of research in the life sciences sector.”

Diana Saraceni, Founder and Managing Partner of Panakes Partners, said, “We are delighted to renew our investment in  Diadem, whose revolutionary technology has the potential to transform the management of Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating condition with enormous costs to the individual and to society. Diadem has made great progress in advancing its AlzoSure technology since our initial investment, generating robust validating clinical data, developing a commercial grade product, obtaining important certifications and awards, and building a foundation for successful global commercialisation in concert with strategic partners. It has emerged as a leader in the important field of novel biomarker diagnostics, and we are proud to co-lead this financing round.”

“We welcome the support of these eminent venture capital groups, who share our vision of a world in which early signs of cognitive impairment are a call to action, not a death sentence,” said Dr. Gerald Möller, Chairman of the Board of Diadem. “Under Paul Kinnon’s exceptional leadership, Diadem will use the funds to further expand the company’s global organisation to support our unique prognostic assay that could revolutionize the Alzheimer’s field. This funding in conjunction with the recently announced EIB loan agreement will provide Diadem with the capital to support the company as it commercialises AlzoSure® Predict and builds a successful global enterprise.”

Diadem is developing the AlzoSure® Predict assay as a simple, non-invasive plasma-based biomarker test to accurately predict the probability that a patient aged over 50 years with cognitive impairment will progress to Alzheimer’s dementia. The company’s technology uses an analytical method that includes a patented antibody developed by Diadem and designed to bind to U-p53AZ and its target sequences. U-p53AZ is a conformational variant of the p53 protein that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of AD in multiple studies.

For CDP Venture Capital, the operation was overseen by Mario Scuderi and Gregorio Gaspari, respectively co-manager and analyst of the Evolution Fund.