NEW YORK — Cicero Diagnostics said on Wednesday that it has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the proteins BCL6 and SIRT1 as biomarkers of endometriosis and endometrial receptivity.
According to the company, the Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant will support a clinical study designed to establish the relative impact of SIRT1 and/or BCL6 to predict in vitro fertilization outcomes in different patient groups and using different sample types such as saliva; establish the role of estrogen suppression on biomarker expression and treatment outcome in women with suspected endometriosis and positive endometrial BCL6 and/or SIRT1 expression; and expand the acceptability and indications for BCL6/SIRT1 biomarker testing.
The study is being conducted in collaboration with Wake Forest Health Sciences, the University of North Carolina, and Stanford University. It is expected to be completed in late 2021.
Huntington Beach, California-based Cicero currently markets a BCL6 test called ReceptivaDx for the detection endometriosis-associated inflammation using endometrial biopsies.