Faculty of Impact grant for Françoise Dekker

Françoise Dekker of the Cellular Protein Chemistry (CPC) group has recently been awarded an NWO Faculty of Impact grant to commercialize FibrilPaint, a method developed in the CPC group for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease in a new start-up company, NeuroTidal Dx. 

The Faculty of Impact is a fellowship program that helps entrepreneurial researchers to achieve societal impact by applying knowledge from their research. In an intensive two-year programme, the fellows are coached and they develop important skills to transform their ideas into a scalable commercial or social start-up. The programme is intended for scientific researchers who want to make an impact with their research and who are also interested in developing entrepreneurial skills in order to set up their own business. 

Neurodegeneration affects 1 in 4 people worldwide by 2050. Even with emerging treatments, diagnosis often comes too late, after irreversible brain damage. Evaluating such treatments is difficult, as disease progression is still measured subjectively. The team in the CPC group developed a biomarker assay that transforms the core disease hallmark, amyloid fibrils, into a direct and quantitative readout. By measuring fibril length in body fluids like blood, their method enables earlier, objective detection and monitoring. Dekker now aims to translate this scientific innovation into a clinically implementable tool that supports both therapeutic development and patient care.