Benzinga | Apr 14, 2021 07:03AM EDT

Renalytix AI Reports Exclusive Option Deal With Joslin Diabetes Center For Patent Filings On Certain Added Novel Biomarkers In Kidney Disease For Development, Deployment In KidneyIntelX In Vitro Prognostic Platform, No Terms Disclosed

Renalytix AI plc (LSE: RENX) (NASDAQ:RNLX) announced today that it has entered into an exclusive option agreement with Joslin Diabetes Center for patent filings on certain additional novel biomarkers in kidney disease for development and deployment in the KidneyIntelX in vitro prognostic platform.

These novel biomarkers have the potential to provide additional clinical utility for understanding early disease progression and risk of kidney failure, therapeutic response, and the mechanistic pathways of kidney disease beyond the inflammatory and tubular injury markers that are currently captured by KidneyIntelX. RenalytixAI plans to begin evaluating these novel biomarkers in expanded clinical validation studies beginning in the second half of 2021.

"These proprietary blood biomarkers have the potential to significantly expand the utility of the KidneyIntelX platform, particularly in understanding how to efficiently enroll and characterize appropriate participants in new drug validation trials. We believe they could also contribute to a better understanding of patient response to approved drug therapies," said Fergus Fleming, Chief Technology Officer, RenalytixAI. "We look forward to working with Joslin and other research and pharma collaborators to build a platform to advance our understanding of underlying causal pathways of kidney disease, and bring precision medicine solutions to clinical practice."

In 2018, RenalytixAI secured an exclusive license from Joslin Diabetes Center to intellectual property relating to sTNFR1 and sTNFR2, both of which have been extensively validated as highly prognostic biomarkers in multiple settings and are integral to the KidneyIntelX test.

"We are pleased to extend our collaboration with RenalytixAI and advance our shared objective to translate high-quality research findings into clinical practice, thereby improving care and outcomes for people with kidney disease worldwide," said Roberta Herman, MD, president and CEO of Joslin Diabetes Center.

The biomarker discoveries have been developed in the laboratory of Andrzej Krolewski, MD, PhD, former Section Head, now Senior Investigator, Genetics and Epidemiology at Joslin Diabetes Center and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, along with his research team at Joslin, as well as other collaborators. Dr. Krolewski and his team have been at the forefront of biomarker research in diabetic kidney disease and have contributed to some of the most important findings in this area over the past 20 years, including the intellectual property on RenalytixAI's existing licensed biomarkers, sTNFR1 and sTNFR2 in Diabetic Kidney Disease. Biomarkers include additional inflammatory and pro-fibrotic markers which have been shown to improve prognostic performance in identifying which patients will progress to kidney failure, and predict responses to therapy.