JNCASR Scientists Develop Smartphone-based Platform for Alzheimer's Disease Detection

By combining brain imaging, biofluid biomarker detection, and smartphone-enabled quantification, the platform is expected to provide a foundation for developing more portable and accessible diagnostic technologies for Alzheimer’s disease

Scientists at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have developed a smartphone-enabled fluorescence platform designed to detect amyloid-beta, a key biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

The technology combines a novel fluorescent probe, TZ-48, with a smartphone-integrated system called ADxFluor.

When TZ-48 interacts with the biomarker, it changes fluorescence intensity and lifetime.

The smartphone-based system captures these changes and analyses them through a dedicated application intended to enable rapid measurement of amyloid-beta.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder associated with memory loss, cognitive decline, and behavioural changes.

The aggregation of the amyloid-beta biomarker into fibrils and extracellular plaques is a central feature of AD pathology and is considered an early disease-associated biomarker.

Current imaging approaches such as positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can provide important diagnostic information, but they require specialised infrastructure, equipment and expertise.

As per the study, blood-based and cerebrospinal-fluid-based tests for Alzheimer’s-related biomarkers, including amyloid-beta and tau, offer less invasive alternatives but can also involve costly equipment and technically complex testing processes.

According to the researchers, the new technology aims to address these limitations and highlight the need for diagnostic technologies that are sensitive, scalable, and easier to deploy.

The research team designed TZ-48 as a fluorescence lifetime-responsive probe capable of selectively detecting amyloid-beta biomarker fibrils through increased fluorescence and distinct fluorescence lifetime signatures.

Fluorescence lifetime-based detection is intended to provide greater robustness because the measurement is relatively less dependent on probe concentration and photobleaching compared with conventional fluorescence intensity measurements.

Published in ACS Chemical Neuroscience, the research demonstrated that TZ-48 has blood-brain barrier permeability.

The probe was also compatible with confocal laser scanning microscopy and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). These techniques enabled the researchers to quantitatively map amyloid-beta burden across different stages of disease progression.

Beyond brain tissue imaging, the researchers demonstrated that TZ-48 could detect the amyloid-beta biomarker in cerebrospinal fluid and blood serum.

To move the technology towards a more portable diagnostic format, researchers Krithi K. Bhagavath, Madhu Ramesh, Yogendra Kumar, Sabyasachi Mandal, Hiriyakkanavar Ila, and Thimmaiah Govindaraju developed the ADxFluor smartphone-integrated platform.

The system uses the fluorescence response generated by TZ-48 to quantify serum amyloid-beta levels through smartphone-based analysis.

By combining brain imaging, biofluid biomarker detection, and smartphone-enabled quantification, the platform is expected to provide a foundation for developing more portable and accessible diagnostic technologies for Alzheimer’s disease and potentially other neurodegenerative disorders.

The technology is currently at the research and preclinical stage.

The researchers stated that further validation in human clinical studies would be required to establish its diagnostic performance and determine whether the technology can be translated into routine point-of-care Alzheimer's disease screening.

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