Companies aim to combine blood-based circRNA biomarkers of disease biology and pathology with objective digital measures of cognition and function, to accelerate Alzheimer's drug development today and create a scalable frontline care tomorrow.
SAN DIEGO and WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Circular Genomics and Altoida today announced a collaboration combining Circular Genomics' blood-based circular RNA (circRNA) biomarker platform with Altoida's AI-powered Digital NeuroMarker™ platform. The alliance is designed to advance an integrated biology-and-function approach to Alzheimer's drug development and frontline healthcare by creating a first-of-kind, multimodal approach to improve early identification, patient stratification and longitudinal monitoring in Alzheimer's disease (AD).
The collaboration brings together two complementary technologies that measure distinct aspects of disease etiology: blood-based molecular signatures of neurodegeneration and disease progression and objective digital measures of cognitive function. Together, the companies intend to demonstrate a new frontline diagnostic paradigm that combines objective measures of digital cognitive function and disease biology.
The integrated approach is designed to create a scalable and efficient digital-first pathway that assesses cognitive function followed by a confirmatory disease biology and pathology blood test . This pathway fits naturally into routine clinical workflows, reduces reliance on specialist-based assessment, and enables earlier interventions when they can have the greatest impact. As part of the collaboration, the companies plan to conduct real-world evidence studies evaluating the combined workflow in clinical research and frontline care settings, with the first pilots expected to launch later this year.
As the Alzheimer's therapeutic landscape shifts toward earlier intervention, the ability to identify individuals at risk before irreversible neurodegeneration has occurred is becoming one of the defining challenges in healthcare. The arrival of disease targeting therapies is reshaping Alzheimer's care. Yet most patients are still diagnosed too late because current diagnostic pathways remain fragmented, specialist-dependent, and difficult to scale.
By combining molecular evidence of neurodegeneration with rapid and sensitive measures of functional change, the collaboration aims to generate evidence for a practical frontline workflow in which a 10-minute, self-administered objective cognitive function assessment can be completed before a circRNA blood biomarker testing is ordered to confirm disease biology. This approach is designed to help reduce reliance on subjective specialist-based neuropsychological batteries that can take hours, streamline referral and treatment decisions, expand specialist capacity, monitor treatment effectiveness more objectively, and extend access beyond specialty neurology and memory clinics and into primary care].
The announcement follows the publication of Circular Genomics' Nature Medicine study demonstrating that a blood-based circRNA signature predicts progression to symptomatic Alzheimer's disease years before clinical onset and provides information complementary to established amyloid and tau biomarkers. It also builds on Altoida's growing body of peer-reviewed research, including its recently published study in Alzheimer's and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring (DADM) demonstrating that the Digital NeuroMarker Platform can accurately detect mild cognitive impairment though a brief self-administered digital assessment, and, when deployed before blood biomarker testing, complements molecular diagnostics while improving the overall performance of a scalable frontline Alzheimer's diagnostic workflow. Altoida is now preparing to initiate a pivotal study intended to support FDA clearance of the Digital NeuroMarker Platform for use across healthcare settings.
"The future of Alzheimer's detection and precision neurology will not be built around a single biomarker; but on combining complementary biological signals with cognitive function assessment. Our CircPath™ platform provides a fundamentally new window into the biology of neurodegeneration, and together with Altoida's digital phenotyping capabilities we believe we can help accelerate therapeutic development while moving the field toward more personalized care earlier in the disease process." Said Paul Sargeant, CEO Circular Genomics.
"Biology and function answer different but essential questions: which biological disease pathways are occurring and how are they affecting the individual patient in everyday life", said Marc Jones, CEO Altoida, "By studying them together, we aim to help drug developers enrich trials, stratify patients and measure change more precisely today, while generating the evidence required for a scalable frontline health care tomorrow."
Together, Circular Genomics and Altoida aim to establish a new multimodal model for precision neurology: improving Alzheimer's drug development today while enabling a future with a more scalable and efficient patient care path.
About Circular Genomics
Circular Genomics is the precision neurology leader pioneering circular RNA (circRNA) technology to develop next-generation molecular blood biomarker diagnostics. Leveraging the unique stability, brain enrichment, and biological relevance of circRNAs, the company is advancing a differentiated platform of blood-based tests designed to provide comprehensive, pathway-level insight into disease biology—with an initial focus on neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease. Circular Genomics' proprietary circRNA platform (CircPath™) is positioned to address critical unmet needs in early disease detection, patient stratification, and therapeutic development support, creating strategic value for healthcare systems, pharmaceutical partners, and patients.
About Altoida
Altoida is defining a new category in neurological care with a first-of-its-kind, AI- and AR-powered digital biomarker platform for clinical-grade cognitive and functional assessment. The company's 10-minute, self-administered Digital NeuroMarker Platform captures millions of raw multimodal data points across motor, speech, and cognitive domains, designed to enable earlier and more objective detection of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease. Built on 20+ years of scientific research and tens of thousands of tests across more than 20,000 participants in academic, research, and global pharma trials, Altoida's Digital NeuroMarker Platform has been independently researched and peer-reviewed in Nature Digital Medicine. With an estimated 200M undiagnosed MCI patients worldwide, many of whom are eligible for new Alzheimer's drugs, patients, payors and providers are demanding scalable solutions. With billing codes available, treatments on the market and more emerging, Altoida is uniquely positioned to meet this $7B+ near-term market and to empower clinicians to deliver earlier interventions when they matter most. Altoida's NeuroMarker platform is currently intended for investigational use only and has not received FDA clearance or approval and is not available for commercial sale.
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SOURCE Circular Genomics
