Dementia is without doubt one of the most crippling circumstances of contemporary instances, inflicting distress and confusion for victims and their family members. Alzheimer’s illness is the most typical type of this sickness, affecting greater than 60 million individuals right this moment and more likely to afflict double that quantity within the subsequent 20 years.
The human price is nearly incalculable however the World Health Organisation places the financial price at greater than £1 trillion a yr, together with skilled and casual care.
It isn’t a surprise then that drug firms are racing to seek out methods to treatment Alzheimer’s or cease its development. Cambridge Cognition helps them to do it and the shares, now 51p, ought to go far.
The firm devises digital checks to evaluate mind well being on a month-to-month, weekly or every day foundation. Tests are carried out on tablets, cell phones and even smartwatches and outcomes are transmitted immediately to Cambridge Cognition. After analysing the info, scientists ship it to pharmaceutical companies and teachers, who’re trialling new remedies for Alzheimer’s and different brain-related circumstances, resembling despair and schizophrenia.
Customers embrace main multinationals, resembling Swiss big Novartis, smaller biotech companies and educational researchers from around the globe. They flip to Cambridge Cognition as it’s recognised as providing a number of the finest digital checks in the marketplace and offering high service, too.
Business brainwave: Cambridge Cognition’s checks of mind well being may be carried out on a smartphone
The firm was spun out of Cambridge University in 2002, following a check initially developed by two professors within the Nineteen Eighties. Traditionally, firms and scientists analyse new medication for brain-related illnesses by amassing teams of sufferers and sending psychiatrists or particular testing consultants to evaluate these people face-to-face. The course of is just not solely time-consuming and costly, it is usually subjective and outcomes may be erratic.
Digital checks are completely different. Objective and dependable, they are often carried out any time and repeated continuously, offering way more detailed evaluation of whether or not medication work and the way efficient they’re.
Cambridge Cognition’s CANTAB check is broadly thought-about the gold-standard within the digital subject however chief govt Matthew Stork has been including new choices, together with voice checks and every day assessments, taking simply a few minutes.
Tests examine round ten completely different mind capabilities, together with short-term reminiscence, emotional empathy, response instances, consideration and focus. The group has moved into qualitative testing with questions resembling how glad individuals really feel or how a lot ache they’re in, on a scale of 1 to 10. And final week, Stork introduced a tie-up with ActiGraph, a agency that conducts bodily mobility checks utilizing units that appear like watches however are rather more refined.
Big pharmaceutical companies may be sluggish to vary. Face-to-face testing has been the norm for many years and lots of proceed to make use of it however adoption of digital choices is gathering tempo, as firms come below rising strain to chop prices and ship new medication extra rapidly.
Stork additionally expects to start out offering checks on to medical doctors and hospitals. Huge advances have been made within the Alzheimer’s subject, with new remedies coming to market and others within the pipeline. Once gross sales start nonetheless, checks must be run to evaluate how efficient medication are and which sufferers are most definitely to learn from them.
Last yr was tough for Stork and his crew. Hit by slower financial development and rising prices, many drug companies scaled again testing exercise. Cambridge Cognition nonetheless elevated gross sales by 7 per cent to £13.5 million, however made an working lack of £1.2 million.
Conditions improved within the second half, nonetheless, orders are rising and brokers anticipate revenues of £16 million and earnings of £600,000 for 2024, rising materially over the subsequent few years.
Midas verdict: Cambridge Cognition creates cutting-edge digital checks to assist deal with a number of the world’s most devastating illnesses. At 51p, the shares appear oblivious to this agency’s experience and future prospects. A protracted-term purchase.
Traded on: AIM Ticker: COG Contact: cambridgecognition.com or 01223 810700