Department of Chemical, Biological, Pharmaceutical and Environmental Sciences, University of Messina, Viale F. Stagno d'Alcontres 31, Messina, 98166, Italy.
Department of Chemistry G. Ciamician - Via F. Selmi 2, University of Bologna, Bologna, 40126, Italy.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2023 Jul;10(21):e2301650. doi: 10.1002/advs.202301650. Epub 2023 May 7.
55 million people worldwide suffer from Alzheimer's disease (AD). A definitive diagnosis of AD is made postmortem after a neuropathological examination of the brain. There is an urgent need for an innovative, noninvasive methodology that allows for an early and reliable diagnosis. Several engineered phages that recognized Aβ-autoantibodies present in the sera of AD patients are previously identified. Here, novel phages are tested for their ability to accurately discriminate AD sera using immunophage-polymerase chain reaction in a miniatured biochip. It is found that five of the six phages analyzed discriminate between healthy controls and AD patients. Further, by combining the response of two phages, non-AD and severe AD cases are identified with 100% accuracy and mild-to-moderate cases with 90% accuracy. While the number of cases used here are relatively small and can be confirmed in larger cohorts, this first-of-a-kind system represents an innovative methodology with the potential of having a major impact in the AD field: from a clinical perspective, it can aid physicians in making an accurate AD diagnosis; from a research perspective, it can be used as a surrogate for AD clinical trials.
全球有 5500 万人患有阿尔茨海默病（AD）。AD 的明确诊断是在死后对大脑进行神经病理学检查后做出的。目前迫切需要一种创新的、非侵入性的方法，可以实现早期和可靠的诊断。此前已经鉴定出几种能够识别 AD 患者血清中存在的 Aβ-自身抗体的工程噬菌体。在这里，使用微型化生物芯片中的免疫噬菌体聚合酶链反应来测试新噬菌体识别 AD 血清的能力。结果发现，在分析的 6 种噬菌体中，有 5 种能够区分健康对照组和 AD 患者。此外，通过结合两种噬菌体的反应，可以 100%准确识别非 AD 和严重 AD 病例，90%准确识别轻度至中度 AD 病例。虽然这里使用的病例数量相对较少，可以在更大的队列中得到证实，但这种首创的系统代表了一种具有重大影响的创新方法：从临床角度来看，它可以帮助医生做出准确的 AD 诊断；从研究角度来看，它可以作为 AD 临床试验的替代方法。
