NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Centogene announced today that it has signed an agreement to help Aldeyra Therapeutics identify patients with Sjögren-Larsson Syndrome (SLS) in support of its effort to develop a treatment for the rare genetic disease.
SLS is caused by mutations that adversely affect lipid metabolism, leading to scaly skin, intellectual disability, and spasticity. While there is no approved treatment for the inherited disorder, Aldeyra currently has a drug candidate — reproxalap — under phase II development.
Under the terms of the agreement, Centogene will work with Aldeyra to identify SLS patients worldwide — including providing access to its CentoMD database of clinically annotated phenotype and genotype variants of rare diseases — and investigate the clinical spectrum of SLS.
"The partnership with Centogene complements the Aldeyra Registry for Patients with SLS, which was designed to unite patients and raise global awareness for the disease," Aldeyra Chief Medical Officer David Clark said in a statement. "Additionally, having access to Centogene's genetic database of patients with SLS demonstrates the critical role of genetics in identifying patients and developing medicines for diseases where treatments are nonexistent."
Earlier this month, Rostock, Germany-based Centogene signed a clinical development collaboration deal with Orphazyme to support clinical trials in India of a neuronopathic Gaucher disease treatment. And in late 2017, it agreed to integrate CentoMD into Qiagen's Clinical Insight bioinformatics platform and companion knowledge base to improve rare disease testing.