Inform Bioscience diagnoses partnership

Inform Bioscience, an Irish biotech, and Mayo Clinic, the US-based non-profit and world’s largest medical group practice, have signed a licensing agreement that will see Inform Bioscience acquire biomarkers for a potentially fatal condition.

The partnership is in addition to the recently formalised relationship between Mayo Clinic and Enterprise Ireland. As part of that deal, the non-profit and Enterprise Ireland will commercialise up to 20 technologies.

The condition, pre-eclampsia, affects pregnant women, and prognostic tests are currently not available. They could provide advance warnings of the condition, and prevent it from developing into eclampsia, a fatal condition which results in seizures, strokes, coma, and death. Symptoms of pre-eclampsia include high-blood pressure and many body systems with associated organ dysfunctions. The issue is that these symptoms are not specific to pre-eclampsia, making a diagnosis difficult.

Inform Bioscience’s research will use urine samples – if affected by the condition, these samples will show a high protein count – and build on biomarker technology developed by Dr Vesna Garovic at the Mayo Clinic. Dublin City University’s Biomedical Diagnostics Institute will then validate the results and create the test and let Inform Bioscience commercialise the product.

Charles Garvey, CEO at Inform Bioscience, said: “Inform Bioscience is bridging the gap between the discovery of quality technology and its commercialisation. Today is a key milestone in the development of Inform Bioscience and demonstrates our capacity to work with and integrate the work of world-class research institutions, such as Mayo Clinic and the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute (BDI) at Dublin City University, to bring innovative new technologies to market.”