Woburn, Mass. — Spear Bio, a biotechnology company developing ultrasensitive immunoassay technology, announced that its SPEAR UltraDetect™ BD-pTau 217 Assay has received a 2026 R&D 100 Award.
The annual R&D 100 Awards, presented by R&D World, recognize 100 of the year’s most significant technological products and advances from industry, academia and government. The 2026 winners were selected from 149 finalists by a panel of more than 50 industry professionals.
Spear Bio’s assay is designed to measure brain-derived phosphorylated tau 217, or BD-pTau 217, in plasma. The biomarker represents a central nervous system-specific subset of circulating pTau 217 and is found at substantially lower concentrations than total plasma pTau 217, making it particularly difficult to measure in healthy individuals and people in the early stages of disease.
The company said its SPEAR UltraDetect™ BD-pTau 217 Assay has a functional lower limit of quantification of 25 fg/mL and requires just 1 µL of diluted plasma. Across evaluated samples from healthy controls and patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the assay achieved 100% quantifiability.
In PET-confirmed research cohorts, BD-pTau 217 measurements also showed strong differentiation between amyloid-negative and amyloid-positive groups, according to Spear Bio.
“Brain-derived pTau 217 has historically been difficult to measure reliably because of the exceptionally low concentrations present in plasma,” said Feng Xuan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Spear Bio. “This award recognizes the technical ingenuity of our team in developing the most sensitive BD-pTau 217 assay with the lowest sample-volume requirement. By overcoming a fundamental measurement challenge, we are giving researchers access to brain-derived tau biology across a broader biological range and enabling new opportunities for early-stage, longitudinal, and therapeutic research in Alzheimer’s disease.”
Zidong Wang, COO of Spear Bio, said developing the assay required collaboration across assay development, technology transfer, operations, quality and manufacturing.
“Breakthrough analytical performance alone is not enough, it has to be translated into a robust and reproducible product that researchers can use with confidence,” Wang said. “Bringing this assay to market required close collaboration across assay development, technology transfer, operations, quality, and manufacturing. This award recognizes both the scientific innovation behind BD-pTau 217 and the disciplined cross-functional execution required to translate that innovation into a high-performance research tool.”
The assay uses Spear Bio’s Successive Proximity Extension Amplification Reaction, or SPEAR, technology. The wash-free system uses a two-factor authentication mechanism to enable sensitive protein measurement without solid-surface capture or washing, with results read using standard qPCR instruments.
