Dr Ashford has ample experience as a Lead Investigator in clinical trials sponsored by the NIH and corporations: The PET scan project and the first double-blind study of a cholinesterase inhibitor to treat Alzheimer’s Disease, among others. Dr. Ashford is leading an international group of scientists to advocate for wide-spread screening for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. He has been developing dementia measurement tools and screening tests that can be used for early detection of this prevalent condition and applied to the rapid and precise assessment of the efficacy of experimental treatments. Prior to joining Stanford/ VA in 2003, he served as faculty at Southern Illinois University, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Kentucky, reaching the rank of tenured Associate Professor. He also directed the Geriatric Psychiatry Clinic at UCLA between 1980 and 1985 and the Lexington VAMC Memory Disorders Clinic.Dr. Ashford is Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (affiliated), Stanford University and Senior Research Scientist at the Stanford / VA Alzheimer Center. He is also on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Northern California Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association and the Chair of the Memory Screening Advisory Board for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. He is involved in coordinating, as a principal investigator, the first clinical trial aiming to evaluate Leptin as a therapeutic for Alzheimer’s disease.
His seminal work includes application of the basic physical principle of Relative-Time to dementia severity measurement, extended to the fields of Alzheimer’s disease and genetics. In addition, he originally proposed the now widely accepted theory of neuroplasticity as the vulnerable factor in Alzheimer’s disease. In 1989 he conceived the first application of Modern Test Theory in the field of Medicine using Item Characteristic Curve analysis to explain the properties of a cognitive test that has been popular for measuring dementia severity. Earlier, his PhD dissertation was a finalist for the Donald B. Lindsley Prize of the Society for Neuroscience, as the first to show physiologically how the brain uses massive parallel distributed processing to analyze information.
Dr. Ashford attended UCLA attaining an M.D. degree, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and finishing his psychiatry residency. He obtained his BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
Neurotez and Cytox signed a Memorandum of Understanding to mutually promote the development of a genetic screen for the identification of most suitable candidates for Memtin treatment and subsequently further evaluate and identify best responders.
Neurotez and Cytox intend to optimize the design of the clinical trial aiming to test and approve the use of Memtin for Alzheimer’s disease. Neurotez is interested in implementing a screening process based on this technology and further analyze how genetic backgrounds influence response to treatment.
About Cytox
Cytox Group Limited provides non-invasive, risk assessment and patient stratification tools for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Cytox’s mission is to transform how new treatments are developed, people are screened, and how patients are managed within the Alzheimer’s disease care pathway.
Cytox has two products: genoSCORETM and genoTORTM that use blood and saliva, so are non-invasive, and can be used anywhere in the world, on a mass scale, without excessive costs associated with current diagnostic approaches requiring highly specialised PET imaging facilities.
These products enable developers of Alzheimer’s drugs to identify patients most at risk of developing the disease, thus providing options to improve clinical trial enrichment strategies to help optimise patient recruitment needs for various clinical study designs.
genoSCORETM and genoTORTM are available on a fee for service basis, through a licensing agreement, or as part of a strategic partnership to develop enabling technologies for use with future marketed drugs.
Cytox is currently preparing genoSCORETM and genoTORTM for US and EU regulatory approval. If approved, any newly approved drug will have the option to use genoSCORETM and genoTORTM as companion diagnostic tools to identify patients most likely to respond to treatment.