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, today 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.