Protagen AG, Dortmund, Germany, and Mikrogen GmbH, Neuried, Germany, recently entered into an agreement to codevelop a new Lyme disease diagnostic capable of distinguishing previously infected seropositive individuals from patients newly infected with active Lyme disease.
The agreement builds on a previous research collaboration between the companies and the results they obtained using the proprietary SeroTag technology developed by Protagen.
Erwin Soutschek, Mikrogen.
“Finding potential diagnostic biomarkers indicative of Lyme disease activity would be a breakthrough for diagnostics and therapy,” says Erwin Soutschek, founder and CEO of Mikrogen. “Employing the technology of Protagen, we have identified a new promising class of blood-based biomarkers with strong potential to fulfill this need.”
Protagen has already identified autoantibody biomarker panels, and Mikrogen will develop and commercialize the diagnostic assay.
Stefan Müllner, Protagen.
“The new biomarkers have the potential to significantly improve current Lyme disease diagnostics, as they offer a completely novel approach to the identification of patients actively suffering from the disease,” says Stefan Müllner, CEO of Protagen. “We are pleased to have leveraged our technology and development capabilities in a new therapeutic area, with a strong and experienced partner in this field. We look forward to utilizing this approach for other infectious diseases too.”
For more information, visit Mikrogen and Protagen.
