NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Myriad RBM announced today that it has signed an agreement to help Sanofi measure cardiovascular risk biomarkers in the blood samples of patients in a Phase III trial of its type II diabetes therapy lixisenatide.
Last year, Sanofi released data from the study — called Evaluation of Lixisenatide in Acute Coronary Syndrome, or ELIXA — showing that the drug did not improve cardiovascular outcomes for the trial's 6,000 diabetes patients who had been deemed high risk after having recently had a spontaneous acute coronary syndrome event. Lixisenatide treatment did not increase cardiovascular risk in these patients either.
Under the terms of their agreement, Sanofi will provide Myriad RBM with roughly 5,300 serum samples from the ELIXA trial. Myriad RBM will analyze these samples using its CustomMAP platform — essentially a version of its immunoassay-based DiscoveryMAP platform that uses pre-selected biomarkers — in order to measure protein biomarkers predictive of cardiovascular and microvascular risk in type II diabetes.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The arrangement follows a 2012 partnership between the companies to identify protein biomarker patterns in serum samples from a Sanofi study testing its long-lasting insulin Lantus (insulin glargine) in pre-diabetic and early type II diabetes patients. They identified a series of protein biomarkers associated with cardiovascular events or death in such patients, which were then confirmed using the CustomMAP platform.