
Why diagnosing Alzheimer’s today is so difficult, and how we can do better - uptown
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/A-better-way-of-diagnosing-Alzheimers
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melling
I didn’t realize Bill Gate’s dad has Alzheimer’s.

I’m not sure why this disease gets relatively little funding. If Gates’
funding leads to early detection, say 10-15 year early, maybe it’ll raise
awareness so it gets more government funding.

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aaavl2821
Alzheimer's actually gets a lot of funding, but mostly for therapeutics, not
diagnostics: it gets a lot of funding from NIH, and neurodegenerative disease
treatments get the third or fourth most VC and big pharma funding (after
cancer, rare disease and maybe infectious disease)

However none of the drugs really work, and ppl think one reason is bc patients
are diagnosed too late

Diagnostics get very little funding in general, not just in Alzheimer's.
Calling yourself a "diagnostics" company is a good way to get ignored by VCs.
You have to do a lot of expensive studies to prove that they work, the bar is
quite high to getting insurers to pay for them, and pricing power is low. Most
insurers will only pay for a novel diagnostic if it saves them money. So you
have high development cost and low profit potential

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CamelCaseName
>Calling yourself a "diagnostics" company is a good way to get ignored by VCs.
[...] So you have high development cost and low profit potential

What can regulatory agencies do to alleviate this?

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aaavl2821
The regulation for many diagnostics is actually fairly light. There's a class
of diagnostics called "lab developed tests" that essentially aren't regulated
by FDA

The development cost is high because you need good data to convince doctors
that tests work, and also to convince payers. Payers have proven to be the
real gatekeepers for many diagnostics rather than FDA

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dweekly
What if you could diagnose with an eye scan?
[http://optinadx.com](http://optinadx.com)

Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Optina Diagnostics

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tuxguy
interesting ! could you describe the key technology behind optinadx to a
layman, in some more detail ?

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jnicholasp
I'm not affiliated with Optina and I don't know specifically what they're
doing, but the classic symptom of Alzheimer's is the formation in the brain of
amyloid plaques - and it appears to be the case that they also form on the
retina, and can thus be detected by appropriate optical scans.

