NEW YORK – Geneoscopy and Adiso Therapeutics announced on Tuesday a strategic collaboration that will involve the use of Geneoscopy's stool-based transcriptome platform to assess patient response to Adiso's experimental treatment for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Under the terms of the agreement, Geneoscopy will prospectively assess gene expression changes in stool samples from patients recruited into a Phase II clinical trial of Adiso's ADS051, a first-in-class, oral, gut-restricted, small molecule modulator of neutrophil trafficking and activation.
Geneoscopy's platform will be used to identify likely treatment responders and may result in a minimally invasive way to monitor for clinical remission.
Recruitment for the global Phase II trial is set to begin next year. Adiso also plans to use Geneoscopy's platform in future trials as part of a precision immunology approach utilizing stool-derived eukaryotic RNA to assess mucosal healing and predict patient response to therapy.
Geneoscopy recently published the results of its CRC-PREVENT trial, assessing the company's ColoSense stool-based colorectal cancer test. Shortly thereafter, Exact Sciences sued Geneoscopy, alleging that the technology underlying ColoSense infringed upon patents covering its Cologuard assay. If made commercially available, ColoSense would be Cologuard's first major competitor.
"Utilizing our RNA biomarker platform to assess stool samples from IBD patients and categorize response to treatment with ADS051 is an exciting opportunity," Geneoscopy CEO Andrew Barnell said in a statement. "Our technology shows significant promise to enhance IBD clinical trials by identifying patients likely to respond to a particular therapeutic and, through noninvasive methods, determining therapeutic effectiveness through the measurement of RNA expression profiles which signal mucosal healing in the colon."