A breakthrough in the early detection of Parkinson’s Disease

The United Arab Emirates University has signed an agreement with BioLegend, a pharmaceutical company from the United States, granting a license to use four university-owned patents to develop diagnostic tools for the early detection of Parkinson’s Disease and other neurological diseases.

The development is a big step forward in line with the UAE’s vision of a knowledge-based economy, and also sends a positive message on the contribution that can be made by the Arab world in the fields of science and medicine.

Professor Omar El-Agnaf, and his team of research assistants and graduate students from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at UAEU have been working for 10 years on developing a new method to diagnose Parkinson’s Disease. They use antibodies produced in the laboratory which carry messages to the nerve cells in the brain. After that, they form a cluster and this cluster is detected by CT scan. This allows doctors to identify the cells that are being damaged by Parkinson’s Disease.

7-10 million people around the world suffer from Parkinson’s Disease, and the lack of early detection hinders effective clinical intervention and causes delays in developing new treatments as well. After achieving successful research results, a patent was filed by UAEU with a lot of global companies showing interest in this particular study.

BioLegend is a multinational pharmaceutical company working to manufacture therapeutic and diagnostic tools for neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzhemiers among others. The agreement grants BioLegend access to intellectual property and patents for the next 10 years, allowing them to utilize these research findings to develop a commercial product.