Amy­loid plaques and tau tan­gles are the most well-known pro­tein struc­tures as­so­ci­at­ed with Alzheimer’s, but a new study bol­sters the long­stand­ing no­tion that there’s a lot more go­ing on in the dis­ease.

Sci­en­tists have com­piled rough­ly 250 mil­lion pro­tein mea­sure­ments from the blood and spinal flu­id of more than 18,600 peo­ple to cre­ate the largest re­source of its kind for study­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases, in­clud­ing Alzheimer’s, Parkin­son’s, ALS and fron­totem­po­ral de­men­tia (FTD). The dataset is re­veal­ing hun­dreds of pro­teins as­so­ci­at­ed with each dis­ease.

Re­searchers hope the data­base will lead to new bio­mark­ers for di­ag­nos­ing and sub­typ­ing the con­di­tions. Sur­pris­ing pro­teins not of­ten linked to Alzheimer’s, in­clud­ing ones in­volved in co­ag­u­la­tion, glu­cose me­tab­o­lism and in­fec­tion re­sponse, could al­so pro­vide new lines of in­quiry in­to the caus­es of the dis­ease and new ways to pre­vent it.

BioN­Tech's strat­e­gy chief Ryan Richard­son is ex­it­ing the Ger­man com­pa­ny on Sept. 30 "to pur­sue new pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties," the in­fec­tious dis­ease and can­cer drug de­vel­op­er said Thurs­day.

His de­par­ture, de­scribed as a "mu­tu­al agree­ment," fol­lows sev­er­al ma­jor trans­ac­tions that lever­aged the com­pa­ny's suc­cess with its Pfiz­er-part­nered Covid-19 vac­cine in­to a broad­ened and re­freshed port­fo­lio. This sum­mer, it an­nounced it would buy mR­NA ri­val Cure­Vac, and that it will part­ner with Bris­tol My­ers Squibb on a PD-L1xVEGF on­col­o­gy drug in a $1.5 bil­lion up­front deal.

“To­day, BioN­Tech is well-po­si­tioned to es­tab­lish the next wave of in­no­va­tions and trans­form in­to a mul­ti-prod­uct com­pa­ny," BioN­Tech su­per­vi­so­ry board chair Hel­mut Jeg­gle said in a state­ment an­nounc­ing the move. "We wish Ryan all the best for his fu­ture and look for­ward to see­ing his con­tin­ued suc­cess."

In its next move to boost the life sci­ences in­dus­try, the UK gov­ern­ment is ear­mark­ing at least £250 mil­lion ($335 mil­lion) to help build a new re­search and de­vel­op­ment site called the Na­tion­al Biose­cu­ri­ty Cen­tre in Har­low, Es­sex.

The cen­ter, lo­cat­ed just over an hour's dri­ve from Lon­don, will be used to de­vel­op ther­a­pies and vac­cines to pre­pare for fu­ture pan­demics, and it aims to be the largest of its kind in Eu­rope, ac­cord­ing to the Thurs­day press re­lease.

The gov­ern­ment said it will even­tu­al­ly in­vest “bil­lions of pounds” in­to the project, which will be­gin as soon as pos­si­ble. The ex­act amount of fund­ing for the Cen­tre will be an­nounced at a lat­er date.