ProSciento, Chula Vista, Calif, a clinical research organization focused on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), diabetes, obesity, and related metabolic diseases, recently announced a strategic partnership with Nordic Bioscience, Herlev, Denmark, a precision drug development and biomarker technology company.
The partnership will utilize ProSciento’s NASH Pass patient registry and Nordic Bioscience’s biomarker technology to identify and validate translational biomarkers to improve the diagnosis, prognosis, and development of therapeutics for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
Morten Karsdal, PhD, Nordic Bioscience.
Currently, liver biopsy continues to be the primary method used to diagnose and monitor NAFLD and NASH. However, liver biopsies are costly, carry a risk of complications for the patient, and are not always representative of the health status of the entire liver. The ability to identify and validate noninvasive (or minimally invasive) biomarkers is an urgent, unmet clinical need and will support critically needed advances in the diagnosis and development of treatments for patients with NAFLD and NASH.
Challenges associated with screening patients for NASH led ProSciento to develop the NASH Pass predictive screening methodology and clinical protocol, enabling care providers an opportunity to offer screenings for their at-risk patients. Participation requires consent that diagnostic data will be used to enhance scientific knowledge of NAFLD and NASH disease progression and the utility of diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers.
Marcus Hompesch, MD, ProSciento.
“We’re very pleased to be partnering with Nordic Bioscience to combine the scientific insight from our access to real-time, longitudinal patient data and biological samples and their cutting-edge biomarker discovery expertise. Bringing together our areas of expertise specific to NASH research provides a much-needed opportunity to gain a better understanding of disease progression and establish new diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to support safe, effective drug development,” says Marcus Hompesch, MD, ProSciento’s chief executive officer.
“ProSciento’s expertise conducting NASH clinical studies and patient access via its NASH Pass program, combined with the complementary expertise and technology at Nordic Bioscience, promises to make this a transformative collaboration for the advancement of NAFLD/NASH research,” says Morten Karsdal, PhD, Nordic Bioscience’s chief executive officer.
For more information, visit ProSciento and Nordic Bioscience.
