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Collaboration for development of MS diagnostic test

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Diagnostics company, numares, and Oxford University are collaborating to develop and in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) test to improve therapeutic decision making for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Test development has been based on published research performed at Oxford University that differentiated MS patients by metabolic biomarkers using nuclear magnetic resonance spectra.1 The disease’s transitions ‘relapsing remitting MS (RRMS)’ and ‘secondary progressive MS (SPMS)’ can currently only be diagnosed retrospectively. A diagnostic test that reliably identifies the emerging transition from RRMS to SPMS by detecting the different biomarker networks would improve the therapy concepts of MS patients.

The collaboration will see Oxford University use numares’ Magnetic Group Signaling (MGS) technology in the advancement of research to develop the IVD product. The German company has developed its NMR-based AXINON IVD system that evaluates NMR spectra to diagnose disease by employing the MGS technology. Under the terms of the collaboration Oxford will provide samples from patients with MS and process them on an NMR system equipped with MGS.

“This collaboration benefits our laboratory and Oxford in several ways,” said Professor Daniel Anthony, head of the Experimental Neuropathy Laboratory, Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford and lead scientist on the project. “First, the MGS-based AXINON IVD system will enable us to accelerate our research due to numares’ software-based profiling system. Second, results of the research may be directly applicable for the development of an MS IVD that could identify patients with progressing disease and help to adopt an appropriate treatment plan. Third, the university will be able to bring its application-orientated research to the patient thanks to numares’ technical and financial assistance and to participate in future royalties from a commercialised test. We are looking forward to a very productive collaboration with numares.”

“Our mission is to improve patient care by providing better diagnostic tools to help physicians better manage their patients,” Volker Pfahlert, CEO of numares added. “A central part of our effort is to collaborate with researchers at academic centres to deploy our system to assist them in their work to both understand human disease and to further expand our product ppipeline by developing diagnostics based on that preliminary scientific work.”

Reference

  1. Dickens, A., et al., A type 2 biomarker separates relapsing-remitting from secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. Neurol., 2014.83:1492–1499.
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