Using a wearable sweat sensor to help optimize the treatment of eczema is the project of a joint partnership between LEO Science & Tech Hub, the Boston-based R&D innovation unit of LEO Pharma, and Epicore Biosystems, which develops wearable microfluidic sensors for monitoring health.  The sensor will measure prognostic biomarkers in real time, monitor patient response and inform treatment decisions.

The initial project will include a proof of concept study in collaboration with engineers and dermatologists at Northwestern University’s Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics and Feinberg School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology to establish baseline measurements and milestones to validate the clinical relevance of the approach for patients with eczema.

“A central goal of precision medicine is to predict early on if a given treatment will work for the individual patient. As atopic dermatitis (eczema) is a diverse skin disease, not all patients will benefit equally from a given treatment,” says Michael Sierra, VP of the LEO Science & Tech Hub, in a statement. “The possibility of enabling healthcare professionals to characterize skin hydration and disease-specific biomarker responses in real-time and in turn, helping them provide personalized treatment regimens for patients, is an extremely powerful concept. We believe that wearable technologies will have a major impact on the future of healthcare and LEO is fortunate for the opportunity to contribute our expertise in skin research and drug development to this project.”

“The possibilities for driving targeted therapies based on high throughput and low-cost analysis of biomarkers in sweat are limitless,” said Roozbeh Ghaffari, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Epicore Biosystems, in a statement. “We’re excited about our partnership with LEO Science and Tech Hub, and see it leading to new classes of wearable metabolic sensors that enable remote tracking of skin disease biomarkers and help accelerate interventions once patients leave the hospital.”