Eli Lilly and Co has announced the acquisition of two imaging agents from Siemens. The agents are designed to illuminate brain deposits of tau, the alzheimer protein linked to brain cellular death. 

The acquisition is designed to further strengthen its lead in Alzheimer diagnostics technology. The agents are radiopharmaceutical tracers that is used with positron emission tomography or PET scans to highlight the specific brain proteins. The deal between Eli Lilly and Siemens Medical Solutions USA were not disclosed.

Lilly was the first company to be awarded US marketing approval for the use of Amyvid, its radioactive tracer in order to detect brain plaque buildup from the protein beta amyloid. The build up is a precursor of Alzheimer's disease.

Aside from selling it on its own, Lilly has the option to commercialize the tracers to be used together with PET scanners. As there are no approved diagnostic means to detect tau in living patients, the research into the science is difficult. Tau forms tangles in the brain that later on progresses into Alzheimer's, where the disease starts killing off brain cells.