NEW YORK (360Dx) — Evogen announced today that it has received a $224,515 grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue development of a protein biomarker-based diagnostic for epilepsy.
With the one-year Small Business Innovation Research grant, Evogen subsidiary Cognizance Biomarkers will work with the Human Epilepsy Project (HEP) to evaluate Evogen's blood-based EvoScoreDX epilepsy biomarker test — which uses a panel of five immune response-associated proteins to stratify actively seizing patients from those who have not experienced a recent seizure — in patients.
In late 2017, Overland Park, Kansas-based Evogen presented data from a study of 31 epileptics and 29 healthy controls indicating that its biomarker panel could differentiate people with and without the disorder. At the time, the company said it aimed to launch EvoScoreDX as a laboratory-developed test through its CLIA facility.
"Clinical studies confirm that EvoScoreDX can diagnose epilepsy more rapidly and accurately than current methods," Evogen CEO Todd Wallach said in a statement. "We welcome the opportunity afforded by this grant to collaborate with HEP researchers and clinicians to further understand how time from seizure affects the test results."
HEP is an international research alliance of doctors, researchers, healthcare workers, and epilepsy patients, and is funded by the non-profit Epilepsy Study Consortium.