In December AQ Biotech and its partners in China signed an agreement on a larger research study to detect Parkinson’s disease from biological samples. This is an extension to the study performed with Professor Vatteri Kaasinen at the Turku University Hospital.
This ambitious project builds on the Parkinson’s disease (PD) cohort and biomarker research established at West China Hospital of Sichuan University, in collaboration with the artificial intelligence platform of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and AQ Biotech in Finland. By integrating AQ Biotech’s proprietary phage-based biosensor biomarker screening technology and E-TRF rapid detection platform, and advancing local translational development through Yiai Jinxuan Technology Co., Ltd., the project aims to develop and apply a prototype assay for early, rapid, and point-of-care diagnosis and prognostic monitoring of PD.
West China Hospital of Sichuan University has established a large longitudinal PD cohort of more than ten thousand participants and has accumulated extensive clinical fluid samples. The hospital has a stable research infrastructure and substantial experience in biomarker discovery and translational validation. The State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy of Sichuan University and Yiai Jinxuan Technology Co., Ltd. provide comprehensive multi-omics platforms for biomarker screening, including multi-omics analysis technologies, LC–MS-based targeted validation, and protein interaction screening. They also have experience in phage library construction and screening, ensuring the smooth implementation of the project.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University has strong expertise in biological and medical information sciences and intelligent knowledge computing. The project brings together researchers in bioinformatics, biomedicine, high-performance computing, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, providing complete technical support for algorithm optimization, software system development, and model building.
AQ Biotech has developed original phage-based biosensor technology and the E-TRF rapid detection platform. Current antibody-based biomarker detection methods rely on luminescence, in which signals are measured through chemical reactions or photoinduced processes. AQ Biotech has pioneered the combination of lanthanide luminescent reporter groups with specific biosensor arrays, enabling greater precision in molecular recognition (Hänninen et al., 2013). Because lanthanide ions have very low absorption coefficients and cannot be directly used for biomarker detection, more sensitive compounds must be incorporated. AQ Biotech has addressed this by innovatively applying both biological and chemical sensors (Kulpakko et al., 2015; 2019ab; 2022). In biological sample testing, the interaction between lanthanide reporter and disease-related biosensors modulates time-resolved fluorescence (TRF) signals, enabling highly sensitive biomarker detection (Kulpakko et al., 2022). AQ Biotech has patented its optimized methods. These methods allow early diagnosis using saliva and urine samples through combined chemical and biological sensors-specifically, phages. Competition between in vitro–selected phages, dyes, and target biomarkers produces measurable changes in TRF and absorbance signals. This platform has achieved notable results in detection and diagnosis of prostate cancer, malaria, lung cancer, and tuberculosis in urine, saliva and serum. The technology has great potential and holds a leading international position in biomarkers discovery.
Through this project, we aim to identify early-stage PD–specific fluid biomarkers and to establish and validate the first multidimensional fluid-based “molecular fingerprint” atlas for PD in China using the E-TRF and biosensor platform. By integrating fluid biomarkers with clinical characteristics from PD cohorts, we will develop an artificial intelligence model for PD diagnosis and prognosis based on the E-TRF phage biosensor technology. Furthermore, we will generate a novel biomarker panel for early PD diagnosis and prognostic stratification using the E-TRF biosensor system, thereby laying the foundation for the development of a rapid diagnostic test kit for PD.
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