Diadem, an academic spin-off active in early Alzheimer diagnostic, raises €1,5 million in its A Round led by Panakes Partners Milan, Italy - December 21th, 2018

Diadem, an academic spin-off active in early Alzheimer diagnostic, raises €1,5 million in its A Round led by Panakes Partners


Panakès Partners has led an investment round of ca. €1,5 million in Diadem an innovative startup based in Milan and London operating in the In Vitro Diagnostic sector for early diagnostic of Alzheimer.

Alzheimer’s affects more people today than cancer and heart disease combined and there are currently no disease modifying drugs approved on the market. Therapeutics in trials are expected to work better in people with limited brain damage, when patients show no or limited symptoms. With current diagnostic tools, however, it is very difficult to identify patients at these early stages. Diadem’s potentially revolutionary new test is blood-based and according to strong preliminary data, should be more accurate, inexpensive and certainly non-invasive and should then solve one of the biggest bottlenecks in the race for a cure.

Diadem’s scientific co-founder Prof Daniela Uberti, University of Brescia, says: “This financing round is instrumental to allow the company to validate and launch our diagnostic kit on the market.” Prof. Maurizio Memo, the scientific co-founder of the company continued: “The momentum is ideal. There is finally scientific consensus in the community that brain damage from Alzheimer’s starts decades before symptoms appear and that therapies should be most effective when symptoms are not present.“

“We are excited of our investment in Diadem since we recognise the value of 15 years of R&D work, with progress potentially affecting one of the main unmet clinical needs of medicine today, the treatment of Alzhemer patients. We strongly believed in the scientific background of the founding team, the robustness of its initial clinical data and are confident that its management team will lead the company to success!” said Diana Saraceni, Panakes General Partner.

“We are excited to work alongside Panakes, a fund focused on the sector, providing the right expertise and international network to the project. Our aim is not only to create value for the company but also for the entire Alzheimers’ patients community” commented Andreas Ballis Managing Director of the UK entity. “We see a bright future for the company, as we are every day more excited about confirmatory data on our predictive accuracy; final validation for regulatory approval will shortly be completed in the coming months and this financing was key to secure our activities“ enthusiastically continued Simona Piccirella Managing Director of the Italian entity

Panakès investment also allowed the company to attract a significant number of talents in the company including advisors and company’s board members. Among them Francesco Granata, an industry veteran, former part of the Executive Committee at Biogen Idec and Group Vice President for Schering-Plough Europe and Canada; Antonio Boniolo co-founder of DiaSorin one of the leading multinationals in the IVD space; Antonella Fassio, former Director of Regulatory Affairs of DiaSorin and on the medical side Prof. Jeff Cummings, a leading key opinion leader in Alzheimer’s and Director Emeritus of Cleveland Clinic Center for Brain Health and Robert Dean, ex. Director Diagnostics & Experimental Medicine at Eli Lilly.

The company will progress the test through clinical trials and regulatory approval in the EU and US. The test is expected to have CE marking in Europe by the end of 2019.

The company will attend the JP. Morgan Healthcare conference in San. Francisco this January.


About Diadem
Diadem develops blood diagnostics for AD at the asymptomatic and very early stages. The company developed he only test in the world that proved in clinical validation, the highest accuracy (>95%AUC) for detecting Alzheimer’s when symptoms are absent, tested on highly qualified longitudinal bio-bank samples of AIBL study. Diadem’s technology is critical for successful drug development for Alzheimer’s disease and early, cost effective, non-invasive diagnosis.


About Panakès Partners
Panakès Partners invests is a Venture Capital investor that finances medical companies, early stage startup and SMEs, with extremely promising products and great ambition, in Europe and Israel, improving both patient outcomes and healthcare economics. Investments focus on the medical device, diagnostics and healthcare IT fields. Panakès Partners is headquartered in Milan, Italy.
www.panakes.it Contact: contact@panakes.it