Diagnostics firm lands more than $20 million in new funding in the past week, with investments from GHR Foundation and ADDF.
Alzheimer’s blood test developer C2N Diagnostics has received two key investments to further its product development. Yesterday, the company announced a $15 million program-related investment from the GHR Foundation to support the development of a blood test targeting tau tangle pathology, while last week the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s Diagnostics Accelerator provided up to $7 million in funding to develop a decentralized clinical mass spectrometry platform for scalable Alzheimer’s disease testing.
The funding from the GHR Foundation adds to its previous commitments to C2N, which now total $50 million since 2020. The new tau-based test, focusing on blood biomarkers such as MTBR-tau, has the potential to assist in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, staging its progression and supporting the development of tau-directed treatments. It could also provide a less invasive and more accessible alternative to tau PET scans.
“Our innovative, precision medicine-focused work has already galvanized the science, the research, and the platform for developing and commercializing novel diagnostics,” said Dr Joel Braunstein, CEO of C2N, which has already developed a cerebrospinal fluid test for tau pathology for research use only. “Now, we’re poised to add tests for tau-based blood biomarkers to our Alzheimer’s disease testing portfolio.”
The investment from the ADDF’s Diagnostics Accelerator initiative supports C2N’s development of a fully automated mass spectrometry platform that aims to decentralize high-performance Alzheimer’s disease testing, allowing clinical and research labs worldwide to perform accurate diagnostics locally. The company says the platform will track both amyloid and tau pathology, with the capacity to incorporate future assays for other neurodegenerative diseases.
C2N points to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association supporting the accuracy of the company’s PrecivityAD2 blood test, which is enabled by its mass spectrometry approach.
“C2N’s Precivity blood tests answer a critical need for less costly and more accessible diagnostic testing in memory and dementia care,” said Dr Howard Fillit, CSO of ADDF. “Their tests are highly sensitive and accurate clinical tools that aid healthcare providers in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. This new investment in C2N’s LC-MS clinical testing platform brings us closer to the day when even more patients will be able to rely on blood tests to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.”
