AI biology company, Prima Mente, is on a mission to tackle one of the greatest challenges in medicine, uncovering the molecular basis of neurodegenerative conditions. These aging-related diseases are characterized by subtle changes in gene regulation, cellular identity, immune signaling, and more that begin decades before symptoms emerge. While much progress in therapeutics has focused on designing new protein structures or analyzing fixed genome sequences, Prima Mente seeks to establish a new paradigm for precision diagnostics that uses AI to understand the dynamic epigenome, where aging biology happens in real-time. “Imaging and cognitive scores don’t necessarily tell you how to intervene or change the path of disease,” said Hannah Madan, PhD, co-founder at Prima Mente, in an interview with GEN Edge. “This is what epigenetics can start to unravel.” The company’s AI model, Pleiades, analyzes DNA methylation changes in cell-free DNA (cfDNA) derived from patient blood samples to diagnose neurodegenerative disease. The method presents an appealing alternative to invasive and costly brain biopsies, which are the current diagnostic standard. Strikingly, Pleiades demonstrated an 89% success rate for detecting early-stage Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in real-world clinical cohorts. That rate subsequently increased to 97% when the model was integrated with leading neurodegenerative protein biomarkers, such as pTau-217. Prima Mente is an NVIDIA Inception member and has partnered with NVIDIA Cloud Partner, Nebius, to leverage the DGX Cloud Lepton AI platform to train and develop Pleiades. The company, whose name translates to “first mind” and signals the approach of breaking down problems to first principles, was founded in 2022 and currently hosts over two dozen employees based across London,…
