Biomedical startups and researchers in neuroscience have been excited for the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a fund to research and treat conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
But DPRIT also could benefit businesses beyond those actually conducting the research.
James Dieter, co-founder and CEO of Houston-based lab testing company Principle Health Systems, said that if voters approve the initial $3 billion for DPRIT in November, it will also be transformative for his business, which is rolling out a new test to detect early indicators of Alzheimer’s in younger patients.
“Texas ranks second in the nation for deaths from Alzheimer’s disease and third for people living with Alzheimer’s,” Dieter told the Houston Business Journal in an interview. “We started to see (working in senior living facilities) that people would call it ‘old-timers disease’ and that’s not real. Alzheimer’s can start to show symptoms in your 20s.”
The DPRIT proposal on the ballot this fall was authored by Texas Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston. It is modeled after the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the state fund first launched in 2007 to tackle cancer research, which has since been touted by medical leaders as a major engine in Texas’ life sciences growth.
For Dieter, DPRIT does not directly steer funding toward Principle’s tests. But universities that have expressed early interest in the fund — like the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston — will need tests to gather data.
“If you need to work on 1,000 or 10,000 patients that have Alzheimer’s every day, are you going to hire a big team to collect those blood specimens, or do you just go to us, where we have access to those people already?” Dieter said.
Principle’s new Alzheimer’s test is one of two that the company has introduced this year alongside another test that helps determine how patients metabolize drugs. The tests are available in all markets that PHS serves in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri.
Principle Health Systems concentrating on innovation after Platform Partners involvement
Principle Health System is the latest incarnation of a business that Dieter had been trying to bring to life since leaving his work as a nurse practitioner in the early 2000s. Initially, he started by putting technical specialists in doctor’s offices to ensure patients could receive back braces or medications without needing to make multiple stops.
But Dieter ran into trouble when he found out that the company wasn’t making enough off of private health care reimbursement. So Principle pivoted to provide testing for skilled nursing facilities and long-term care facilities in Texas.
“The average lab is reimbursed 62% of the time; we’re a little bit better than this,” Dieter said. “But fast forward to today — now we have a network of contracts. We’ve partnered with the big payors, but (going to long-term care) helped us get our foot in the door.”
The company expanded outside of Texas thanks to an investment from Houston-based private equity firm Platform Partners in 2022. Dieter said Platform’s involvement helped quadruple the company’s workforce.
According to Platform’s website, the firm assists the Principle team with strategic planning, financial reporting and forecasting, and strategic HR resources.
Moving forward, Dieter sees artificial intelligence in doctor’s offices as a revival of Principle’s original concept, and he’s eager to work on it again.
“I was just trying to help doctors move quicker because, again, speed is outcomes in our world,” he said. “In the past three months, this is somewhat of a rebound now. We have AI, so we’re just evaluating where that fits.”