GenDx and Horaizon have teamed up in a consortium led by prof. dr. W. de Jonge from the UMC Amsterdam which has received a 4 years TKI-PPP funding. Goal of the project is to develop a rapid assay to predict therapy response in Crohn’s disease patients.
About the project
Current mainstream therapeutics (“biologicals”), are only partially (<50%) effective and it cannot be predicted which biological will be effective in which patient. This lack of appropriate response to treatment in terms of true clinical remission and healing of ulcerations leads to high cost, and serious adverse events in unresponsive patients. In preceding two-year collaboration, involving 240 patients, the three parties showed that epigenetic markers are highly useful to discriminate responders and non-responders prior to therapy. In this project, targeted epigenetic assays towards markers identified by UMC Amsterdam, will be validated by Horaizon. GenDx will coordinate further development towards a diagnostic kit, to be able to deliver the optimal treatment for each individual Crohn’s disease patient.
