OmegaQuant, the company behind fatty acid testing and the Omega-3 Index, has been awarded a small business innovation research (SBIR) grant to develop a test identifying fatty acid patterns that predict dementia risk as an early screening tool.
 
The panel which awarded the SBIR grant concurred that the project was high-priority since it would advance a method for predicting impending dementia, versus already-established dementia cases.
 
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 6.7 million Americans aged 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s disease, a common form of dementia. Approximately 73% of these cases are ages 75 and older. The number of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease is anticipated to nearly triple to 14 million people by 2060.
 
Treating Alzheimer’s and dementia currently costs around $345 billion, not including the value of unpaid caregiving, and the medical and scientific communities are still seeking ways to screen people for early indicators of dementia risk, and it’s thought that simple biomarkers of nutritional status, such as the Omega-3 Index, could be useful.
 
OmegaQuant and the Fatty Acid Research Institute (FARI) have teamed up to utilize large cohorts where they have access to fatty acid data and dementia where they can deploy machine learning to identify the ideal fatty acid profile for predicting dementia risk.
 
FARI, which was established in 2020, is a nonprofit which brings together experts in fatty acids to accelerate discoveries in omega-3s and other fatty acids as they relate to health.
 
“If we are able to identify a highly predictive fatty acid-based risk factor, then we will test whether it is clinically relevant. In other words, will this fatty acid-based risk factor possess the predictive power against other traditional risk factors for dementia,” said William S. Harris, PhD, FASN, president and founder of FARI, and founder of OmegaQuant Analytics.
 
“If this Phase 1 grant delivers promising results, we will apply for a Phase II grant that will allow us to test this biomarker in a clinical trial and eventually bring this test to market,” Harris added.
 
It is the hope of those who awarded the grant that creating early screening tools will have a strong impact on public health, and generate major cost savings for individuals and the healthcare system at large.
 
“There is a strong need for accessible and inexpensive early predictive biomarkers of dementia risk to facilitate the early identification of high-risk individuals, providing the time necessary to make meaningful lifestyle changes to slow or prevent disease progression,” Harris said.