C4X Discovery launches new precision medicine platform

C4X Discovery launched a new precision medicine platform called ‘PatientSeek’ on Wednesday, after a successful research collaboration with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

The AIM-traded company said the new platform was aimed at identifying the most effective treatments, and matching them with groups of patients who were most likely to benefit, thus accelerating the drug development process.

During the collaboration, C4XD provided the Garvan Institute with the genetic signatures for its PatientSeek sub-groups in Parkinson's disease.

The Garvan Institute researchers then used that information as part of a retrospective analysis of a failed phase three Parkinson's clinical trial that had not reached its primary endpoint.

C4XD said the goal was to assess if a genetic subgroup of participants showed a benefit from the therapeutic.

It noted that PatientSeek identified a subgroup that responded to the trial drug, with that insight having the potential to help identify the most effective treatments and match them with groups of patients most likely to benefit.

The result provided the first validation of PatientSeek's ability to identify patient subgroups to optimise patient selection, which in turn could lead to enhanced probability of targeted success in clinical trials.

While the study focussed on Parkinson's disease, the company said the PatientSeek platform is disease agnostic and could be applied to any complex genetic disease.

The results from the study would be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in due course.

“Our new PatientSeek platform is the result of a successful ‘Taxonomy3’ collaboration with Garvan Institute,” said the firm’s senior vice-president of drug discovery Dr Clare Murray.

“Taxonomy3 has historically been used for target identification, but this study clearly demonstrates the potential to use PatientSeek to apply our unique mathematical approach to stratify patients for novel treatments based on their genetics.

“C4XD has already identified PatientSeek subgroups in immuno-inflammatory disease and we will be exploring their application in bringing precision medicine approaches to these patient populations.”

At 0833 GMT, shares in C4X Discovery Holdings were up 0.67% at 17.24p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.