Ariana Pharma is teaming up with Bio-Rad France, Inserm’s center of excellence for viral hepatitis, and Beaujon Hospital to develop new biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of chronic hepatitis. Bio-Rad will lead the three-year Hepachronix project, which will focus on gaining new insights into the processes by which liver fibrosis in HCV patients evolves from an early mild disease to serious conditions such as cirrhosis and hepatoma carcinoma.
The ultimate aim will be the development of a biomarker-based early diagnostic for helping to diagnose fibrosis and predict resistance to antiviral therapy. Bio-Rad will retain the right to market any resulting diagnostics in return for paying its partners royalties. The project will be funded in part by the French FUI and the Ile de France region.
Ariana’s role in the Hepachronix project will involve the implementation of its KEM® (Knowledge Management Platform) technology. Ariana is a decision-support company focused on transforming data into information to accelerate the discovery and development process and improve the safety of drugs. The KEM platform has been developed as a proprietary decision-support technology for rapid analysis of multiparametric/multi-objective data.
The firm’s participation in the Hepachronix project follows just a couple of months after it reported starting a collaboration with FDA through which KEM will be provided to FDA reviewers to help in the analysis of pharmacogenomics data and patient characteristics for biomarker signatures submitted through the agency’s Voluntary Exploratory Data Submissions program.