Project description
Characterising rheumatoid arthritis earlier and better could enhance treatment outcomes
Rheumatoid arthritis is a complicated chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect skin, eyes, lungs, heart, and blood vessels in addition to joints. It can be difficult to diagnose early because symptoms are similar to many other diseases and there is currently no one blood test to confirm diagnosis. Treatments vary depending on severity and duration of illness and some can have serious side effects. Better diagnosis and predicted prognosis could lead to more effective treatment with fewer complications. PAPRAT has developed a multi-biomarker assay combined with clinical and demographic factors to enable prediction of patient prognosis with very high accuracy. Now they are optimising and validating it for market use.
Objective
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) affects 1% of world population (17.6 M) and it is a relevant economic burden (€45 Bn spent yearly in Europe). It is a degenerative disease that affects bone health, cause joints’ deformity, impact other organs and cause disability. An early and personalized treatment can greatly improve its outcome, achieve remission and reduce pain, thus an accurate prognosis is critical for its efficient management. However, this is difficult for the lack of good prognosis factors (currently rheumatoid factor-RF or anti-citrullinated protein antibodies-ACPA), which at present are very few, poorly accurate and leave 40% of patients unclassified (suffering health complications due to an unnecessary aggressive treatment or from deterioration due to delays in proper treatment). Making Genetics is a Spanish start-up focused in personalized medicine through genomic approaches. We have designed and developed a prognostics test for RA based on a blood test and the use of our new PAPRAT algorithm, with 82.4% accuracy. PAPRAT is a multiple biomarker-based system capable of classifying pre-rheumatoid arthritis patients, discerning which will need a more aggressive treatment. It combines unique genomic markers (genetic and epigenetic), as well as clinical and demographical variables, to calculate a predictive index and classify patients’ RA severity as HIGH (needing early administration of a combined therapy with biological DMARDs) or LOW and MEDIUM (non-biological DMARDs are enough). It is at a TRL6 and now we aim to optimize it, further validate it, develop a software platform and prepare its market launch. RA is expected to grow by drivers such as an ageing population or the continued uptake of biosimilars, and we have currently a total addressable market of 17.6 M patients globally and of around 3M in Europe. We will offer a complete prognosis service, including the blood testing, as well as the licensing of our software platform once it is finished.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgenetics
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinerheumatology
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespersonalized medicine
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringmedical laboratory technologylaboratory samples analysis
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
31110 NOAIN
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.