PerkinElmer joins hunt for Alzheimer's test

Alzheimer's is an insidious disease that gradually strips its victims of their cognitive abilities. There is no definitive treatment.

For doctors, there's another problem: There's no good way to diagnose Alzheimer's, other than waiting for tell-tale symptoms like short-term memory loss.

PerkinElmer Inc. of Wellesley is trying to change that. Working with researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and Large Scale Biology Corp. of California, the company has identified unique proteins found in the blood of Alzheimer's patients. The hope is that the proteins can be used to identify the disease before symptoms develop. Such materials in the body -- whether in blood, spinal fluid, or other materials -- are called biomarkers.

Doctors said such a diagnostic test is needed now, while more effective drugs are still under development.

''We can't wait to have the treatments validated and then find a way to identify the patients," said Dr. Dennis Selkoe, an Alzheimer's specialist and professor of neurology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

''There's a medical need for biomarkers that can accurately detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer's."

PerkinElmer's research into biomarkers is part of a larger trend in medicine. Doctors are searching for ways to identify diseases that develop undetected until they have devastating effects. Ovarian cancer is particularly deadly because there are often no symptoms until the disease has spread.

Many firms are working to perfect diagnostics based on biomarkers. For instance, Genzyme Corp. said earlier this month it had licensed genetic lung cancer markers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The deal could enable Genzyme to offer diagnostic testing services based on the new markers.

For PerkinElmer, the push into biomarkers is also indicative that a seven-year radical corporate makeover is largely complete. The company had formerly been known as EG&G, and was a provider of scientific and project management services to the government, with an emphasis in defense and aerospace.

Greg Summe joined EG&G as chief executive in 1998, and began to reshape the company. Over three years, the company bought and sold businesses worth $1 billion. Key among them was the 1999 acquisition of the former Perkin-Elmer's analytical instruments business for $425 million.

He renamed the companyPerkinElmer and then sold off the government services.

Today, more than 70 percent of the company's revenue comes from ''health sciences" businesses, including genetic screening and high-tech equipment for drug discovery. John Danner, vice president and general manager of the firm's biopharmaceutical business, said the announcement last month of the Alzheimer's discovery with Rush could be the first of many.

''We really plan to establish ourselves as a commercialization vehicle of groundbreaking biomarker discoveries," he said.

PerkinElmer is working with Bay State Medical Center in Springfield to find biomarkers in urine and blood serum that could indicate organ transplant rejection.

For PerkinElmer, development of successful biomarkers provides a dual boost to business. The firm sells mass spectrometers, sophisticated machines used to identify the makeup of proteins and other organic compounds. It also sells reagents, the chemicals used to identify specific substances during the analysis. Such chemicals, which provide an ongoing stream of revenue from an instrument purchaser, are called ''consumables."

''It's a double whammy," said John Harmon, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. ''The reagents in particular have very nice margins." Harmon does not own PerkinElmer shares.

Harmon said purchases of analytical instruments such as mass spectrometers are lagging last year's total as pharmaceutical companies have tightened their capital spending budgets. Nevertheless, he rates PerkinElmer a ''strong buy," the firm's highest ranking, and has a 12-month price target of $27. The firm's shares closed Friday at $19.19. The shares have dropped nearly 20 percent since reaching $23.86 in February.

In the Alzheimer's program, Large Scale Diagnostics provided software for analyzing results from PerkinElmer machines. The results were announced at a meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, but the company said they need to be replicated in larger studies.

Mary Lopez, business leader for the firm's analytical proteomics business, said the diagnostic test uses six different biomarkers that form a unique pattern in Alzheimer's patients.

''Compared to other methods, a panel of biomarkers has a higher chance of being accurate than a single marker," she said.

PerkinElmer also provides proprietary methods to enrich, or amplify, the biomarkers present in patients' blood, she said, making it easier to measure tiny amounts of particular peptides, which are fragments of proteins. If the results prove valid, a commercial Alzheimer's diagnostic would be difficult for competitors to copy, she said.

Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com.