In Simple Terms
Researchers plan to study 80,000 stored blood samples to look for patterns that may be linked to brain health and diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A sensitive new method can detect tiny amounts of substances that ordinary tests might miss. The findings could help scientists understand when changes begin, but they won’t provide a new diagnostic test right away.
A Vast Search for Early Clues
The project, called Proteomics to Identify Risk and Signatures Associated with Midlife Brain Health (UKB-PRISM), was announced by Alamar Biosciences and Nightingale Health on November 2, 2026. It will use samples from participants in UK Biobank, a major research resource that allows scientists to study human samples and health data on a large scale.
Nightingale Health will carry out the measurements in its laboratories using Alamar’s NULISA platform. The aim is to measure hundreds of proteins in blood samples from 80,000 participants. The researchers are not focused on just one protein. By measuring many at once, they can investigate whether particular combinations or patterns are associated with brain health or the risk of brain disease.
The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. It is funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK, and LifeArc. Their involvement reflects a shared research interest in developing tools to study biomarkers: measurable signs in the body that can help scientists understand a health condition or biological change.
Why Look for Clues in Blood?
One reason the project matters is that the biological changes that precede an Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diagnosis may begin long before symptoms appear. If some of those changes can be detected in blood, researchers may be able to study what is happening earlier, rather than seeing only the stages when symptoms are already clear.
The brain is not completely cut off from the rest of the body. Proteins perform many jobs in body tissues, from helping with repair to regulating inflammation. But scientists still have a limited understanding of how these proteins work together and how they relate to brain health. So the researchers are not simply asking whether one protein rises or falls; they also want to explore a much wider set of proteins and the relationships between them.
The scale of the diseases involved helps explain the interest in this work. According to figures cited by the participating organizations, more than 55 million people worldwide live with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, while more than 12 million have Parkinson’s. The announcement also projects a sharp rise in the number of people affected by these conditions by 2050. Those figures help explain why researchers are looking for better ways to understand the diseases and their progression. They do not mean that this project will prevent the increase or provide a treatment.
How NULISA Detects Rare Proteins
NULISA is a technology that uses antibodies linked to short strands of DNA. The antibodies act as recognition tools, binding to the proteins of interest in a sample. The attached DNA tag turns that capture into a signal that can be read later.
Once the antibodies have bound to the proteins being measured, the sample goes through capture and release steps. These help remove some background signals that could interfere with the measurements. The tags associated with the proteins are then read using next-generation sequencing. In this way, the platform combines immune-based protein recognition with a readout based on DNA sequencing.
High sensitivity matters because some proteins being studied in connection with neurodegenerative diseases occur in blood at extremely low levels. If an analysis tool cannot distinguish them at those levels, the signal may go undetected or be confused with other signals. Measuring hundreds of proteins across a large number of samples gives researchers the chance to investigate a broader range of potential biomarkers and compare patterns across a large dataset.
Still, detecting a protein does not, by itself, prove that it is a reliable marker of a particular disease. Measurements need to be interpreted in context, and researchers must test whether any patterns they find are repeatable and relevant to brain health. The project will provide material for research and evaluation, not a ready-made medical verdict for each participant.
From Measurements to a Better Understanding of Risk
Alamar’s founder, CEO, and chair, Yuling Lu, says that measuring these signals in tens of thousands of people could open up new ways to investigate when disease-related changes begin and why. An important part of this goal is the focus on the period before symptoms appear. The question is not only what distinguishes a condition after diagnosis, but whether the samples contain clues that could eventually help researchers understand the early stages of the underlying biological process.
Adam Lewandowski, deputy chief scientist at UK Biobank, points to the many roles proteins play in the body—and to how much remains unknown about how they work together and affect the brain. This highlights that measuring proteins is about more than making a list of chemical levels. The broader aim is to build a picture of a network of molecules and functions that may be connected to brain health.
Samantha Hutton, chief biomarker scientist in translational research at the Michael J. Fox Foundation, expects the data to help assess potential biomarkers and guide future treatment research. In practical terms, the results may help researchers decide which signals deserve closer study or refine the questions asked in later investigations. The data will not automatically prove that any particular treatment works.
A Possible Link to Diagnosing Rare Forms of Dementia
The data may also be useful for conditions that can be difficult to diagnose. Sam Barrell, CEO of LifeArc, has said the research resource could help lay the groundwork for more precise diagnoses of rare forms of dementia. One reason these conditions can be hard to identify is that their symptoms may overlap with those of other disorders, making them difficult to distinguish.
A large set of protein measurements could let researchers test whether different patterns are associated with different conditions, or whether some markers could help narrow down the possibilities. But this is a potential research benefit, not a result that has already been established. The announcement does not say the study will produce an immediate clinical test, or that the proteins being measured will be enough on their own to identify a particular type of dementia in an individual.
It is important to distinguish between three stages: finding a measurable signal, confirming that it is reliably associated with a health condition, and then demonstrating that using it improves diagnosis or medical decisions. UKB-PRISM is focused on building a large dataset and measuring proteins. It could support later evaluation, but moving from research findings to medical use will require additional evidence.
The Value of the Data After the Analysis
The results will not be limited to the project teams. Once the study is complete, the full dataset is expected to be made available to approved researchers around the world through UK Biobank’s research analysis platform. Under the platform’s access rules, other scientists will be able to study the data and ask questions that may go beyond the initial analyses.
Sharing the data is especially valuable because measurements of hundreds of proteins in 80,000 samples could support broad comparisons and give multiple research teams the opportunity to examine different relationships between proteins and brain health. Making the resource available to approved researchers may also allow them to reanalyze the findings and test for new patterns, rather than having scientific understanding depend on a single report or research question.
Even so, a large sample size does not guarantee that researchers will find a decisive biomarker. More samples expand the scope of the search, but the value of any result still depends on the quality of the measurements, the strength of the relationship found in the data, and whether it can be confirmed. A change in a protein level also does not, by itself, show that the change causes a disease; it may be associated with the disease or reflect some other change that needs further study.
What to Expect Now
For now, the project’s main contribution is to test whether a highly sensitive platform can measure a broad range of proteins across a large number of blood samples, and to create a resource for studying indicators of brain health. This could help researchers narrow down which questions to pursue about Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other forms of dementia, especially questions about the period before symptoms begin.
But the path from a laboratory signal to a test used in clinics is long. Researchers need to find out whether a marker can distinguish a disease from other conditions, whether it provides meaningful information across different people, and whether it actually improves the accuracy of an assessment. The announcement reports no measurement results or validated biomarkers: the study is still under way, with completion expected by the end of 2027.
The initiative is therefore important as a foundation for a broad research effort, not as the announcement of a ready-to-use early diagnostic test. If the analyses show that certain proteins or groups of proteins merit attention, they could become the subject of follow-up validation studies and help guide research into disease mechanisms or biomarkers. The significance of those possibilities will depend on what the data show and what later studies can confirm.
The Bottom Line
UKB-PRISM will bring together 80,000 blood samples and Alamar’s NULISA platform, which is designed to detect proteins found at very low levels, to investigate signals that may be linked to brain health before neurodegenerative symptoms appear. Nightingale Health will carry out the measurements, and three partners are funding the work. The project is expected to finish by the end of 2027, with the data to be made available later to approved researchers. The resource could help evaluate potential biomarkers and shape future research, but it is not yet a proven test for predicting Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Its real value will depend on the findings and whether later research can confirm them.