NEW YORK and AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — The
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Foundation and Rules-Based Medicine,
Inc. (RBM) announced today that they have reached the first
milestone in a program to develop a panel of plasma protein
biomarkers for SMA using RBM’s Multi-Analyte Profiling (MAP)
technology platform. In this collaboration, RBM will discover
and also confirm plasma protein biomarker candidates previously
identified from the multicenter Biomarkers for SMA (BforSMA)
clinical study sponsored by the SMA Foundation and conducted by BG
Medicine. The identification of such biomarkers may help to assess
drug efficacy and shorten the duration of clinical trials of SMA
therapies.
In this initial stage of the collaboration, the SMA Foundation
provided BforSMA plasma samples to RBM for processing on the
DiscoveryMAP™ platform plus an additional set of 70 biomarker
assays. Candidate biomarkers were found that significantly
differentiated between disease and control groups and correlated
with SMA disease severity. The SMA Foundation and RBM are
continuing to analyze these results and plan to create a specific
panel of biomarker assays for use in clinical trials exploring new
treatments for SMA.
“Biomarkers are critical to accelerating therapeutic development
for any disease. They are even more important for rare diseases
like SMA where patient populations are small and mostly consist of
children,” said Karen Chen, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of the
SMA Foundation. “We are excited to work with RBM to leverage their
MAP technology to develop a biomarker panel for SMA that will help
evaluate responses to treatments more efficiently and minimize the
burden of clinical trials for patients and families.”
“We are delighted to support the efforts of the SMA Foundation
to develop better treatments for this tragic disease,” said Craig
Benson, Chief Executive Officer of RBM. “Our MAP technology
has been e
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