SuppreMol employs Protagen biomarkers in SLE study
13 August 2011
SuppreMol GmbH, a privately held biopharmaceutical company
developing innovative therapeutics for the treatment of autoimmune
diseases and allergies, and Protagen AG, a specialist in in-vitro
diagnostics and GMP-compliant protein analysis, have announced a
collaboration to identify therapy-related biomarkers in patients with
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE).
“We will use the unique biomarker portfolio of Protagen for the
rapid identification of autoantibody signatures in the serum of SLE
patients enrolled in our current phase IIa study of our lead product
SM101,“ said Prof. Peter Buckel, CEO of SuppreMol. "With these
signatures we aim to identify patients who are most likely to
respond favorable to SM101. In addition, our findings may allow the
classification of patients into subgroups as SLE is a disease with
very diverse manifestations. The UNIarray technology platform of
Protagen offers a unique opportunity to explore the potential for a
personalized SLE therapy concomitant to the clinical development of
SM101.”
“SuppreMol is the first innovative clinical stage company
building on the early integration of our indication-specific
biomarker panels at the beginning of Phase IIa. We are very happy to
enter into this collaboration project. Both of our companies are
convinced that this approach will allow for specific enrollment as
well as better stratification of SLE patients, and that it will
significantly reduce the development risks of upcoming clinical
studies,“ added Dr Stefan Müllner, CEO of Protagen.
Financial details of the collaboration are not disclosed. The
cooperation as well as SuppreMol’s phase IIa SLE study are supported
by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as
part of the Leading Edge Cluster m4.
Source: SuppreMol, Protagen