NEW YORK (360Dx) – Hennigsdorf, Germany-based Sphingotec said today that it recently signed an agreement with Mayo Clinic to collaborate on the evaluation and use of biomarkers that could improve the diagnosis of certain disease states, including kidney disease, breast cancer, sepsis, and cardiovascular disease.
Under the agreement, for research and potential routine clinical use, Mayo Clinic will evaluate proenkephalin (penKid), a blood-based biomarker that provides information on the current status of kidney function, and three other biomarkers, Sphingotec said.
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Sphingotec Founder Andreas Bergmann said in a statement that biomarkers such as proenkephalin provide the potential to guide treatment and help patients at an increased risk of kidney failure. "This collaboration with Mayo Clinic will help provide research and diagnostics for all four assays that we hope will aid in curing, and ultimately preventing, life-threatening diseases," he said.
Mayo Clinic will evaluate three additional biomarkers discovered at Sphingotec labs including proneurotensin (pro-NT) for the risk assessment of developing breast cancer in women; adrenomedullin (bio-ADM) for the prediction of shock in patients with sepsis; and high-sensitivity growth hormone (vr-hGH) for the prediction of cardiovascular disease in men.
Leslie Donato, clinical chemist and co-director of cardiovascular laboratory medicine at Mayo, said, "With this collaboration, Mayo Clinic can serve as a US-based testing center for any physician or scientist interested in evaluating these assays for their own research questions. We can run their samples on these analytically validated tests, and together, we can help determine the clinical utility for these biomarkers, ultimately better serving all of our patients."