Alamar Biosciences and Nightingale Health to Lead UK Biobank 80,000-Sample Neurodegenerative Disease Study
Key Highlights
- ➤80,000 UK Biobank blood samples targeted for neurodegenerative disease biomarker analysis
- ➤Alamar’s NULISA platform will measure hundreds of circulating protein biomarkers
- ➤Nightingale previously generated metabolomic data across all 500,000 UK Biobank participants
- ➤Study completion expected by end of 2027; full dataset planned for approved researchers
- ➤Alzheimer’s Research UK, LifeArc and other partners are funding the study
Expert Statements
Adam Lewandowski, Deputy chief scientist at UK Biobank
“Understanding how the brain stays healthy as we age is one of the biggest challenges in medical research”
Adam Lewandowski, Deputy chief scientist at UK Biobank
“Proteins play a vital role in this process, helping to repair tissue, regulate inflammation and support countless functions throughout the body. Yet we still know relatively little about how they work together to influence brain health.”
Adam Lewandowski, Deputy chief scientist at UK Biobank
“Made possible by the generosity of our participants, these new data will provide an invaluable snapshot of the proteins associated with brain health decades before conditions such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease are diagnosed.”
Yuling Luo, Founder, CEO and chair of Alamar Biosciences
“For decades, the earliest biology of neurodegeneration has been out of reach in blood because the proteins that matter most are present in such small amounts. NULISA was designed to change that”
Yuling Luo, Founder, CEO and chair of Alamar Biosciences
“Working with Nightingale and UK Biobank, we can now measure those signals across tens of thousands of people, years before symptoms appear, and give researchers everywhere a new way to ask when and why these diseases begin.”
Teemu Suna, Founder and CEO of Nightingale Health
“This study reflects what Nightingale has built: a laboratory platform that delivers high-quality blood biomarker data at population scale.”
Teemu Suna, Founder and CEO of Nightingale Health
“We have already generated metabolomic data on all 500,000 UK Biobank participants, and adding brain health protein biomarkers measured in our laboratories to the same cohort creates a uniquely rich resource for understanding the earliest molecular changes behind dementia, Parkinson’s disease and related conditions.”
Teemu Suna, Founder and CEO of Nightingale Health
“Identifying disease risk years before symptoms appear is the foundation of preventive healthcare, and studies like this show it can be done at the scale that real impact requires”
Sheona Scales, Director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK
“The scale of this study, combined with the cutting-edge technologies being used, has the potential to transform our understanding of how dementia starts and progresses”
Sheona Scales, Director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK
“Understanding the biological changes that underpin Alzheimer’s disease is essential to developing treatments that can slow or stop its progression. We’re excited by the potential of this study to pave the way for earlier diagnosis and more effective treatments.”
Sam Barrell, CEO of LifeArc
“Rare dementias can be particularly difficult to diagnose, with symptoms that overlap with other conditions and clues that may only become clear when different kinds of health data are brought together”
Sam Barrell, CEO of LifeArc
“By combining large-scale protein measurements with UK Biobank’s extensive health data, this study will give researchers a valuable resource to investigate the biological changes behind neurodegenerative diseases, including rare dementias. This could help build a better understanding of these conditions and lay the groundwork for more accurate diagnosis in the future.”
FREMONT, Calif. and HELSINKI, Finland, Nov. 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alamar Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: ALMR) and Nightingale Health Plc (Nasdaq Helsinki: HEALTH, OTCQX: NHLTY, NGHLF) today announced the launch of the UK Biobank vanguard study to measure blood-based biomarkers that are of particular importance for neurodegenerative disease. The UK Biobank Proteomics for Risk Identification and Signatures of brain health in Midlife (UKB-PRISM) study will be conducted in Nightingale’s laboratories using Alamar’s NULISA platform, which is purpose-built to detect low-abundance proteins at a sensitivity not previously achievable at scale, and will measure hundreds of circulating protein biomarkers in 80,000 blood samples from UK Biobank participants. Findings will create one of the world's largest open-access resources for understanding the early molecular indicators of neurodegeneration.
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