NEW YORK – Clinical research organization ProSciento announced Thursday a partnership with biomarker technology firm Nordic Bioscience to identify translational biomarkers for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
The partnership will use ProSciento's Nash Pass patient registry, along with Nordic Bioscience's Protein FingerPrint biomarker technology to validate minimally invasive biomarkers to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutic development for NAFLD and NASH. The PRO-C3 biomarker, which detects neoepitope fragments of collagen type III, will be evaluated in the partnership due to its demonstrated association with poor prognosis in fibrotic liver diseases.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Nash Pass is a predictive screening methodology to give clinicians a chance to screen at-risk patients and use the data to enhance knowledge of the diseases. Based on a single blood draw, it uses biomarkers, predictive algorithms, and assessments to diagnose NAFLD and NASH and determine patient eligibility for clinical research. San Diego-based ProSciento said the directory currently includes more than 1,000 screened patients.
Most of the biomarkers discovered with Nordic Bioscience's Protein FingerPrint technology detect structural components of the extracellular matrix, and some have been validated in studies of patients with musculoskeletal disorders, fibrosis, and cancer, the Danish firm said.
In 2017, Nordic Bioscience announced a collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb to develop biomarkers and diagnostics to evaluate NASH in preclinical models and clinical settings.Â