NEW YORK — RenalytixAI said on Tuesday that it has partnered with the University of Michigan to further develop the company's KidneyIntelX kidney disease test.
RenalytixAI also said that it has entered into a data-sharing alliance with an undisclosed global pharmaceutical company.
KidneyIntelX applies artificial intelligence to electronic health records, predictive blood-based biomarkers, and genomic information to aid in the identification, prediction, and risk stratification of progressive kidney disease patients. It received approval from the New York State Department of Health earlier this month.
Under its deal with the university, RenalytixAI will have access to the University of Michigan Medical School's Clinical Phenotyping Resource and Biobank Core (C-PROBE), which includes samples and medical data on over 800 longitudinally followed chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients with a range of disease subtypes including ones related to diabetes, hypertension, and glomerular disease.
RenalytixAI said it will initially study whether urinary epithelial growth factor (uEGF) can be used as a biomarker to improve KidneyIntelX's ability to identify patients at the highest risk of developing diabetic kidney disease (DKD) and kidney failure.
The UK-based company noted that it has been granted an exclusive option to license certain uEGF-related intellectual property from the university.
Additional terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Under the data-sharing deal with the undisclosed pharma firm, RenalytixAI will have access to the company's data from completed clinical studies in DKD. RenalytixAI said it will analyze these data in combination with corresponding biomarker data to evaluate KidneyIntelX's performance in predicting patients' responses to novel therapeutic agents for slowing or preventing kidney function decline. These analyses will include an evaluation of the test over multiple timepoints within a six-year follow-up period, potentially demonstrating the value of repeat testing.
"We expect that gaining access to this clinical trial data, biomarker technology, and the C-PROBE cohort will be key milestones in the development of expanded indications for KidneyIntelX, potentially allowing us to offer solutions to a greater number of the approximately 37 million patients currently estimated to have CKD," RenalytixAI Cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Fergus Fleming said in a statement.
In April, RenalytixAI began working with Mount Sinai Health System to study biomarkers that may predict major adverse kidney events in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.