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PredictImmune, developers of pioneering prognostic tools for guiding treatment options and improving patient outcomes in immune-mediated diseases, announced today the granting of patents in the UK and Europe and Notice of Allowance in Canada relating to a method for predicting autoimmune disease risk.
These patents are part of an expanding and comprehensive portfolio of patent applications and other intellectual property supporting PredictImmune’s goal of enabling personalised medicine for a range of immune-mediated diseases. The patents, which were licensed from Cambridge Enterprise, address methods of assessing whether a subject is at high or low risk of autoimmune disease progression for a series of autoimmune and immune mediated diseases, including ANCA-Associated Vasculitis (AAV) and Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The methods referred to in the current patent applications compare the relative expression levels of genes in patients’ blood samples (whole blood, CD8+ cells or PBMCs).
The UK, EU and Canadian patents expand PredictImmune’s existing patent portfolio and further protect the organisation’s current IP in the development of prognostic tests across a broad range of inflammatory and immune mediated diseases using a broad range of platforms.
Immune mediated diseases, such as AAV and IBD, are chronic and incurable with clinical courses that vary among individuals with the same disease. There is currently no way of knowing whether a patient is likely to experience a severe, relapsing form of the disease or have a more quiescent clinical outcome. As a consequence of this uncertainty, all patients are treated with the same ‘standard of care’, resulting in a a significant proportion of patients being under- or over-treated. PredictImmune’s innovative prognostic products will identify patients with more aggressive disease, who may benefit from state-of-the-art (biologics) anti-inflammatory drugs.
PredictImmune’s first product, addressing IBD (both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis), is based on a simple whole-blood quantitative PCR assay and predicts long-term disease outcome at diagnosis prior to treatment. This allows patients to be grouped based on their risk profile, informing clinical management and enabling clinicians to select the most appropriate treatment for the individuals’ predicted disease course. The R&D phase of the test has been completed and the test is currently in the final stages of validation ahead of product launch.