NEW YORK ─ Renown Institute for Health (IHI) announced Tuesday that it is partnering with Foster City, California-based Gilead Sciences and Erlangen, Germany-based Siemens Healthineers to offer the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) Test to people at risk for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) enrolled in the Healthy Nevada Project, a genetic population health study.
The ELF Test will help identify people most at risk for progressing to cirrhosis and liver-related outcomes and allow healthcare providers to intervene before irreparable damage occurs, Reno, Nevada-based IHI said.
The collaborators anticipate testing more than 30,000 study participants by 2023.
Financial and other terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.
The ELF Test is a non-invasive blood test that can quickly identify which patients are at an elevated risk for developing cirrhosis and other liver-related clinical events, IHI noted.
In contrast to standard liver enzyme tests that reflect liver damage that has already occurred, the ELF Test combines three serum-based biomarkers of active fibrosis, IHI added.
An ELF Test algorithm measures each of the biomarkers to create a score that can be used to assess the risk for future disease progression and evaluate whether a patient requires increased medical care and monitoring, IHI said.
In the US, the ELF Testing Service is available from Siemens Healthcare Laboratory, a CLIA-certified laboratory in Berkeley, California.
The availability of the ELF Test for the project builds on a strategic collaboration between Renown IHI and Gilead announced in July 2019. The ongoing partnership aims to collect and analyze de-identified genetic and electronic health data from 60,000 qualifying study participants to enhance the understanding of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and NASH and to potentially inform the development of treatment options for these diseases, IHI said.
Renown Health is an integrated healthcare network that serves Nevada, Lake Tahoe, and northeast California.