Siemens Healthineers has expanded its brain health research offerings with two fully automated blood assays: the Atellica IM Phosphorylated tau 217 (pTau217) test and the Atellica IM Brain Derived Tau (BDTau) test. Both are chemiluminescent immunoassays that give a quantitative reading of these brain-derived proteins, and both run on the company's Atellica Solution IM and Atellica CI analyzers, instruments already installed in laboratories worldwide.
The practical appeal is the sample itself. Confirming the biological signatures of Alzheimer's has traditionally leaned on cerebrospinal fluid, which means a lumbar puncture - an invasive, uncomfortable procedure that limits how often and how widely testing can be done. A blood draw removes that barrier, at least for the research setting these assays are aimed at. The technical challenge has been sensitivity, since the relevant proteins circulate in blood at far lower concentrations than in spinal fluid; Siemens Healthineers points to the detection capability of the Atellica IM platform as what makes the measurement feasible.
Henrik Zetterberg, the neuroscientist known for his work on biomarkers of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases, underscored that the engineering of the analyzer matters as much as the biomarker, because the signal has to be amplified enough to produce reliable results from blood. He noted that blood tests are simpler for patients and clinicians alike, and that the format allows testing to be scaled up, patients to be followed over time, and panels of several biomarkers to be assembled.
The context is a growing global burden: close to 10 million new dementia cases are diagnosed each year, with Alzheimer's accounting for 60 to 70 percent of them and driving increasing dependence on caregivers as the disease progresses. Tools that let researchers track brain proteins repeatedly and at scale are a step toward understanding how these conditions unfold - though this announcement concerns research capability rather than a test being offered to patients in the clinic.