Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most frequent genetic disease over the world, affecting around 5 million people. Although it has been discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, its medical care is still insufficient, thus Sickle Cell Disease is still very severe. Globaly life expectancy of the patients is reduced by about 30 years. Over and above this, SCD is a large burden for patients and for society, from both a social and an economic point of view. Severe pain and multiple organ complications that patients face result in tremendous suffering, prolonged absences from school, and difficulty maintaining full employment. Long hospital stays can occur multiple times per year, leading to a complete disruption of the person’s and family’s life. In addition, because of the complexity of the pathophysiology of SCD, the associated clinical costs of SCD have been estimated to reach € 10 million for a patient living 45 years, in Europe.
According to the expert-physicians, the medical care is insufficiant because therapeutic options are limited and there is a lack of diagnostic tools to support their treatment decision during the follow-up of patients. In recent years, pharmaceutical companies have shown increasing interest in sickle cell disease, which has led to the authorisation of new molecules (e.g. Crizanlizumab, voxelotor, L-glu) and increasing therapeutic development involving some 40 companies in approximately 700 clinical studies, including the development of gene therapy. The therapeutic arsenal available to physicians is changing profoundly, particularly with the existence of several molecules that make it possible to avoid the onset of a painful crisis. But today, there is still no diagnostic tool to help the physician to use these treatments.
INNOVHEM is a french start-up whose mission is to improve the health and the quality of life of patients. Painful crisis is the most common manifestation and first cause of death of the disease. By developing a unique medical device for its risk occurence within a year, INNOVHEM will stratify the patients and guide the physician to personalise the treatments in order to avoid them, in particular to adjust current medication dosing or to decide for the use of new high cost treatments.
