NEW YORK – RenalytixAI said on Wednesday that it has signed an exclusive option agreement with Boston-based Joslin Diabetes Center for patent filings on specific biomarkers in kidney disease for development and deployment in the RenalytixAI's KidneyIntelX platform.
The UK-based firm aims to begin evaluating the biomarkers in expanded clinical validation studies later this year. Financial and other details of the agreement were not disclosed.
RenalytixAI's KidneyIntelX platform provides risk assessment of progressive decline in kidney function or kidney failure in patients with early-stage diabetic kidney disease. The assay uses machine learning algorithms to examine biomarkers and electronic health record data to spot progressive kidney disease.
RenalytixAI believes the new biomarkers from Joslin Diabetes Center may offer additional clinical utility to help understand early disease progression, risk of kidney failure, therapeutic response, and the mechanistic pathways of kidney disease.
The firm previously secured an exclusive license from Joslin Diabetes Center to intellectual property related to sTNFR1 and sTNFR2, which have been validated as prognostic biomarkers in several settings and are important to the KidneyIntelX test.
"These proprietary blood biomarkers have the potential to significantly expand the utility of the KidneyIntelX platform, particularly in understanding how to efficiently enroll and characterize appropriate participants in new drug validation trials," Fergus Fleming, chief technology officer of RenalytixAI, said in a statement. "We believe they could also contribute to a better understanding of patient response to approved drug therapies."