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"Your coffee cuts blood flow to your brain by 30%": Thomas Kirk on whether dementia drugs work
<p>Here's a fact we didn't expect: that coffee you're holding cuts blood flow to your brain by around 30%. Today's guest has built technology that can see it happening, and the bigger prize is using it to show whether the new wave of Alzheimer's drugs is working for each patient.</p><p>On today's episode, we're joined by Thomas Kirk, co-founder and CEO of Quantified Imaging. Thomas went from building ventilators with Oxford and Smith & Nephew at the start of COVID, to a free vaccination-planning tool used by around half of UK GPs, to founding a company around ASL MRI: a scan that measures blood flow in the brain and costs a fraction of a PET scan. We get into why dementia drugs that only slow decline by 30% on average need a better way of tracking who's responding, why data rather than regulation is the biggest barrier to growth, the role of the University of Nottingham, and where the technology goes next, from GLP-1 obesity drugs to psychiatry.</p><p>If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment. </p><p>To learn more about what we're doing at SyndicateRoom, head to <a href="https://www.syndicateroom.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">syndicateroom.com</a> or follow <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tombritton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">Tom Britton on LinkedIn</a>.</p><p></p>