SimplicityBio joins 3.2M Eurostars funded program

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14.07.2017
Heart

The HeartLinc Program led by FIRALIS aims to develop a test for the risk of developing heart failure after acute myocardial infarction. The availability of such a test would allow a more effective treatment and a drastic reduction of the burden of heart failure on healthcare systems.

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a leading cause of mortality worldwide, often caused by the development of heart failure (HF) after myocardial infarction (MI). In the EU and the USA, there are 2.2 million AMI patients each year. Up to 30% of AMI patients will develop HF during the five years following the infarction and more than 50-70% of the patients die within five years after diagnosis. In East-Asia, the prevalence of HF ranges from 1.3% to 6.7% throughout the region and is expected to increase during the next decades.

Preventive therapy has shown to be effective by slowing down the progression of the disease in those patients that go on to experience heart failure. However, such intervention requires that patients at risk are identified early.

The potential for long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in disease prediction, therapeutics, and companion diagnostics is widely recognized by the scientific community and the diagnostic industry. Despite the potential, no lncRNA-based products have been commercialised yet. Therefore, new lncRNA-products would be considered as a breakthrough development, strongly stimulating the field of lncRNA-based research and development.

In this project, the consortium will develop an innovative in vitro diagnostic (IVD) test to assess the risk of developing HF after AMI. The consortium includes the Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH), the QuantaMatrix company (Seoul, South Korea), the Firalis Group (Huningue, France), the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) of Toulouse (France) and SimplicityBio (Monthey, Switzerland).

The medical benefit of the IVD test will be validated in blood samples of European and Asian AMI patients. “We are now in a position to confirm the performance of our HEARTLINC IVD test simultaneously in Asia and in Europe” said Hueseyin Firat, CEO of Firalis.

The HeartLinc project will deliver an IVD test suitable for fast, multiplex, and high throughput HF prediction. This test will be an entirely new product and a breakthrough development. It will address an unmet medical need by identifying AMI patients at risk for HF, hence, allowing early treatment and monitoring treatment response. This is of particular importance in context of recently approved innovative drugs, such as Entresto.

In order to reduce the incidence of HF, the HeartLinc test will help clinicians to apply a personalized treatment suitable for each individual patient. A predictive model will be established integrating the data from divers sources including clinical, biological and imaging data. SimplicityBio has developed new bioinformatics tools to discover and increase the performance of predictive models. “We are very happy to be part of the HeartLinc consortium developing the first precision medicine tool for the prediction and the management of AMI-induced heart Failure” said Dr. Matthew G. Hall, the founder & CEO of the company.

(Press release)

Picture: zerodym / Fotolia.com

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