THE FIRST STEP TO PERSONALIZE AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE TREATMENT

There are over 100 different autoimmune disorders.

When firstly diagnosed, patients are treated with conventional DMARDs, which are cheaper but also very inespecific.

After a first trial period (usually 6 months), doctors evaluate if the treatment has been effective and 40-50% of patients do not respond to these treatments. During the period the patient has been treated with a non-optimal treatment, they have been suffering the consequences of the autoimmune disorder, worsening and also having the adverse events linked to any medication.

BIOHOPE has developed a solution that could help decide if 1st line treatments are the best solution for a patient. Our first study has been done in Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The 2nd line treatment consists of JAK-inhibitors and/or biologics. Patients are also treated with this more advanced solutions -and switched between treatments- based in trial-and-error. Studies also show a similar efficacy (and failure rate) across these therapies – i.e. 50% of patients will be mistreated with any chosen drug. Besides treating the patients with non-optimal treatment, these 2nd line treatments are much more expensive. Specifically, biologics suppose about USD 1,000 per patient monthly.

BIOHOPE has developed a solution to select the most effective 2nd line treatments for an individual patient.

We have started first steps to evaluate JAK-inhibitors (Tofacitinib and Baricitinib) and biologic treatments (monoclonal antibodies) in individual patients. In JAK-inhibitors, we observed that dose/response curves are directly correlated with drug potency over patient’s cells.

There is no other test in development in the world to personalize this kind of treatment used in several indications.

WHY Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)?

Among 100 different autoimmune disorders, we have chosen Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) as our first indication.

This is due to multiple factors:

Nowadays RA has an incidence of over 40 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the US and Europe and it keeps growing. It is one of the most diagnosed autoimmune diseases.

RA also has one of the highest economical burdens caused by an autoimmune disease.

RA is defined as a systemic autoimmune pathology associated with a chronic inflammatory process. It starts damaging joints and can affect heart, kidney, lung, digestive system, eye, skin and nervous system.

Newly diagnosed RA patients start with a therapy based in Methotrexate and only based on trial-and-error, they are then switched to other therapies . According to our first study, candidates show capabilities to anticipate patient clinical response after 6 months of Methotrexate treatment.

We have developed a new test that could evaluate the efficacy of Methotrexate (first line treatment) for individual patients diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS – Pilot Study

“Pilot study to evaluate the feasibility and analytical robustness of a new pharmacological test for sensitivity/resistance to immunosuppressive drugs, designed to personalize the medical treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (Immunobiogram®)”

Prospective study with a follow up of 6 months after diagnosis that evaluated the predictive capacity of response to methotrexate in naïve patients.

The results showed a clear trend towards greater sensitivity to the immunosuppressant in patients with disease remission.

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