Could This Blood Test Revolutionize How Dementia and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases Are Diagnosed?

Esya Labs co-founders Dhivya Venkat and Yamuna Krishnan aim to provide tests that can noninvasively diagnose dementia, measure disease progression, and track the effectiveness of new drugs, reports Forbes . Esya is designing precision diagnostics using cell-scanning nanotechnology for early and accurate identification of neurodegenerative diseases, long before the appearance of physical symptoms. Their goal is to enable treatment to begin before damage takes root. Esya plans to measure and monitor disease progression for neurocognitive diseases via a simple blood test or skin biopsy using a patented DNA device, helping pharmaceutical firms with drug development by measuring treatment response. This will facilitate personalized medicine by pre-evaluating the best-suited treatment for individuals. Esya's technology is built by knitting together DNA filaments into sensors, containing devices to measure specific chemicals. "We use this to interrogate living cells in culture to understand how the cells function," Venkat said. "Using our sensor technology we image key chemicals within the Lysosome, building a toolkit of non-invasive biomarkers to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases at the earliest stage."