NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Sistemic today announced an agreement with NHS Scotland to develop biomarkers for the early detection of diabetic retinopathy and infective keratitis.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In a statement, Sistemic Chief Scientific Officer Vincent O'Brien said that while the increase in people with diabetes is well documented, "less well appreciated is that retinopathy is the largest cause of blindness in working age people and has a massive impact on quality of life as well as a huge cost burden on the NHS. … The potential to combine the Sistemic technology for understanding changes in miRNA and then using these to guide understanding of what is happening inside the eye is a very exciting prospect."
Headquartered in Glasgow, UK, Sistemic provides miRNA-based services and kit-based products to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and cell therapy markets. Among the products it offers are those for miRNA profiling, the analysis of changes to miRNAs "when a cell is perturbed by a stimulus," and the analysis of changes to miRNAs within a "multilayered" biological context, the company said on its website.