NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Biotech firm Berg announced today that it has partnered with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) to improve comprehension of neurological disease pathology and develop novel biomarker strategies for neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease.
As part of the collaboration, MGH and BWH will provide Berg access to a longitudinal collection of clinically annotated patient-derived biospecimens from the Harvard biomarker study. The Berg Interrogative Biology platform will offer a comprehensive insight into the molecular basis and progression of Alzheimer's disease, allowing new avenues for diagnostic and therapeutic development.
"The Harvard Biomarkers Study is a powerful incubator for biomarker discovery and precision neurology, [as the] longitudinal biobank can speed up the biomarker test cycle from years to weeks," Clemens Scherzer, study co-founder and head of the Precision Neurology Program at BWH, said in a statement. "[The biobank] comprises more than 2,500 participants, including patients at the earliest stages of cognitive decline."
Berg's Interrogative Biology platform combines detailed patient multiomics profiling with in-depth artificial intelligence analysis to expedite biomarker discovery.
"Through this agreement, we can address the significant unmet need to improve detection, diagnosis and stratification of neurological diseases and speed earlier clinical intervention, which is especially important in the asymptomatic molecular stages through the early dementia phase of Alzheimer's disease," Berg president and CEO Niven Narain said in a statement.
Additional terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Earlier this year, Berg announced that it has partnered with Sanofi to identify biomarkers that indicate influenza vaccine performance.