Nautilus Biotechnology has announced a new collaboration with the Allen Institute, aimed at investigating the role of tau proteoforms in Alzheimer’s disease. The partnership brings together Nautilus’ single-molecule proteomics platform and the Allen Institute’s neuroscience expertise in a joint effort to identify early biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative conditions.

The collaboration will leverage Nautilus’ Iterative Mapping platform to study tau proteoforms — distinct molecular variants of the tau protein — in human brain tissue samples. The research will explore patterns of phosphorylation and prevalence across samples from both cognitively normal individuals and those with Alzheimer’s.

While the significance of tau pathology in Alzheimer’s is well-established, there remains limited understanding of how specific tau proteoforms drive disease progression. The new agreement aims to address this gap by enabling researchers to analyze large volumes of single-protein molecules with high sensitivity and reproducibility.

“We are pleased to partner with the Allen Institute to answer highly impactful questions about the role of tau proteoforms in Alzheimer’s disease and to further demonstrate the critical role that single-molecule protein analysis may play in advancing the development of new diagnostics and treatments,” said Parag Mallick, co-founder and chief scientist of Nautilus. “Our Iterative Mapping approach is generating excitement from the wider scientific community which sees it as an entirely new class of measurement — a fundamentally different way to understand biology — and we are thrilled to continue pushing the frontiers of proteomics with pioneers like the researchers at the Allen Institute.”

The company’s recent preprint, Development of a method for large-scale single-molecule analysis of tau proteoforms, highlights the platform’s ability to provide biologically meaningful data at scale. According to Nautilus, the method delivers strong performance across key metrics including sensitivity, reproducibility and dynamic range, with the capacity to process millions to billions of single molecules per experiment.

The Allen Institute, a non-profit organization known for its open science model and large-scale biological research, brings extensive knowledge in neurodegenerative biology to the partnership. The collaboration may pave the way for the development of new diagnostic tools and therapies, particularly by identifying how distinct tau proteoforms relate to disease stages or patient subtypes.

Looking ahead, the company says it hopes to support broader clinical research efforts by enabling high-resolution, proteome-scale insights in a scalable format that can be adopted across disciplines.