Abyssinia Biosciences and Cordance Medical announced  that they have entered into a collaborative agreement to explore focused ultrasound in diagnostic and therapeutic applications for Alzheimer's disease.

The collaboration will focus on early identification of toxic amyloid abnormalities in Alzheimer's disease by utilizing Cordance Medical's ultrasound mediated SonoBiopsy™ technology. Furthermore, Cordance's SonoScript™ technology will be used to investigate how focused ultrasound can enhance the brain biodistribution of Abyssinia's antibodies.

"Ultrasound guided drug delivery is an emerging method to improve the efficacy and safety of Aβ immunotherapy," said Bhaskar Ramamurthy, CEO and co-founder of Cordance, "In addition to its potential to obtain liquid biopsies from brain tissue in a non-invasive way, focused ultrasound should continue to be explored as potentially one of the safest methods of monoclonal antibody brain delivery and targeted delivery to disease-relevant brain areas."

"Now that Aβ immunotherapy has been established as an effective strategy to slow cognitive decline in mild to moderate stages of Alzheimer's disease, prevention and treating the earliest stages of the disease become the next most important goals. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Cordance Medical to evaluate the performance of higher exposures of our therapeutic antibodies in preclinical Alzheimer disease models, and to explore the utility of BBB opening for biomarker development," said Frederic Godderis, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Abyssinia Bio sciences. "This partnership complements our ongoing evaluation of shuttle technologies to optimize BBB penetration as well as our biomarker development efforts."