Alzheimer's researcher Sebastian Palmqvist at Lund University has received USD 19.4 million (SEK 190 million) from the US National Institutes of Health, awarded through the National Institute on Aging, to develop a clinical test built around the biomarker MTBR-tau243. The stated target is an FDA-approved blood test within five years.
The work runs from 2026 to 2031 with Palmqvist as principal investigator, in collaboration with three American institutions: Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Alabama. Patient cohorts on both sides of the Atlantic, in Sweden and the US, will be involved. Lund describes the award as the largest competitively won grant it has ever secured from a US funder.
Palmqvist credited the award to a long collective effort, naming his US co-applicants, the BioFINDER group and colleagues Niklas Mattsson-Carlgren and Erik Stomrud. Lund framed the grant as international recognition of its Alzheimer's research and as evidence that cross-border collaboration can produce something patients actually use.
Why this matters comes down to access. Diagnosing Alzheimer's has traditionally leaned on specialist infrastructure, and a validated blood-based test that clears regulatory review would be far easier to deploy in ordinary clinical settings. The university notes such a test could make a difference to patients and to health systems carrying the cost of diagnosis.