Innovate UK has awarded PredictImmune a £100,000 grant to apply its biomarker-based technology towards the prediction of drug response in IBD.
The grant comes from Innovate UK’s ‘Precision medicine technologies: shaping the future’ fund, and will be used to support a feasibility study into the use of biomarkers to predict patient response to new and existing treatments, carried out in collaboration with leading pharma companies active in IBD.
PredictImmune will launch its first product PredictSURE IBD in January 2019, which will enable the stratification of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients at the point of diagnosis, based on their risk of relapse.
The grant comes shortly after PredictImmune announced European Conformity In-Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices (CE IVD) certification for PredictSure, readying it for launch in the UK and Europe.
The mark indicates significant progress towards improving treatment and outcomes for IBD patients in the UK and Europe, who currently don’t always get the most appropriate form of treatment for their case due to the methods currently used.
Commenting on the grant, Paul Kinnon, chief executive of PredictImmune, said the firm is “delighted” to receive support from Innovate UK.
“The commercially driven feasibility studies, using our prognostic test for IBD, PredictSURE IBD, will identify which patients will benefit from the early use of more aggressive treatments and which treatment they will best respond to.
“The study takes us a step closer to achieving our goal of personalised medicine in IBD.”
