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Entelos to ID Most Effective Cardiovascular Disease Biomarkers for FNIH Biomarkers Consortium

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Entelos today said it has signed a contract with the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Biomarkers Consortium to study and prioritize biomarkers of cardiovascular risk.

Under the terms of the contract, Entelos will use its Cardiovascular PhysioLab platform for the Biomarkers Consortium Atherosclerosis Project to perform computer simulations aimed at identifying those biomarkers that may be most effective at predicting cardiovascular disease and disease progression.

Results from its work could allow drug companies to design better clinical trials and develop more effective drug candidates and to streamline and unify testing protocols submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration, San Mateo, Calif.-based Entelos said.

While scientific literature and clinical databases contain vast amounts of information about biomarkers, they have been studied one at a time and measure only a specific aspect of atherosclerosis, said David Fryburg, a consultant and former pharmaceutical company executive, who is leading the project.

"Integrating these into a comprehensive computer-based disease model will allow us to identify those short-term measures which best predict long-term clinical outcomes like heart attack and stroke," he said in a statement. "Successful development of this model can facilitate more confident testing of new therapies for atherosclerosis and prevention of cardiovascular disease."

More than 100 biomarkers have been measured in patients with cardiovascular disease. Research suggests that each of the biomarkers may be able to predict whether a patient's condition is improving or worsening, but these markers have not been measured in multiple studies or evaluated in a large number of patients.

Entelos' technology reproduces underlying disease mechanisms and identifies biomarker changes in response to disease progression as well as drug interventions, Entelos President and CEO Shawn O' Connor said. "Importantly, we evaluate this change in a huge virtual population — guaranteeing that we are taking individual patient variability into account," he said in a statement.

The Biomarkers Consortium comprises the NIH, FDA, private industry, and academia. The collaboration with Entelos is expected to last two years and to result in new knowledge and computerized models and tools, Entelos said.

Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.