Professor Srdjan Djurovic at the University of Oslo has been awarded NOK 40 million (roughly 3.5 million euros) by the Research Council of Norway to search for blood-based biomarkers capable of identifying people at elevated risk of Alzheimer's disease long before any symptoms appear. Djurovic works at the Centre for Precision Psychiatry and at the Department of Medical Genetics at Oslo University Hospital, and the project will combine new research methods with large-scale patient data.
The reasoning behind the project is straightforward. Alzheimer's builds slowly over many years, and by the time a diagnosis is made the cognitive decline is usually well advanced. With no effective cure available and case numbers climbing globally, the practical opening lies earlier in the timeline - before the brain has sustained irreversible damage. Djurovic says reliable predictive markers "may be decisive for early prevention and could provide a breakthrough in how Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed and treated."
For patients and families, the appeal of a blood test is obvious: it would be cheaper and far less invasive than the imaging and spinal fluid analysis currently used to detect Alzheimer's pathology, and it could be applied to people who feel entirely well. But identifying the biological signals that precede clinical symptoms is the hard part, and that is precisely what the Oslo team has set out to do.
The project, titled "Multimodal metabolic markers for mechanisms and predictive trajectories of Alzheimer's disease," is the first the Research Council of Norway has funded under a scheme specifically designed to build world-leading research environments in the country. Djurovic will work with colleagues at the Centre for Precision Psychiatry, led by Professor Ole A. Andreassen, the Department of Medical Genetics, and other research groups across Norway and Scandinavia. This is funding for discovery work, not a test ready for the clinic - any markers the team identifies would still need validation before they could guide care.