Entelos signs contract with FNIH for biomarker consortium

Consortium to combine industry, regulatory, academia leaders

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Written byKelsey Kaustinen

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Kelsey Kaustinen
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Internal Medicine

SAN MATEO, Calif.—Entelos, an in-silico modeling company that provides simulation productsand consulting services, has announced the inking of a contract with theFoundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH) for services to berendered in conjunction with the Biomarkers Consortium Atherosclerosis Project,aiming to study biomarker prioritization in Entelos' Cardiovascular PhysioLabplatform.

The Consortium consists of a broad range of stakeholders inthe fields of medical, pharmaceutical and food sciences, with participants inboth academia and the private sector. The project is expected to lastapproximately two years and result in new knowledge and advanced computerizedmodels and tools.

"This remarkable consortium of stakeholders has taken on thechallenge of determining which of the many proposed biomarkers have the mostdirect mechanistic links to cardiovascular health," Shawn O'Connor, presidentand CEO of Entelos, said in a press release. "In doing so, they have askedEntelos to address these questions by performing simulations in ourCardiovascular PhysioLab platform. Our platforms reproduce underlying diseasemechanisms and identify how biomarkers change in response to both diseaseprogression and to therapeutic interventions. Importantly, we evaluate thischange in a huge virtual population – guaranteeing that we are takingindividual patient variability into account."

Several industry corporations will be taking part in theconsortium, including the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Amongthe private sector, additional participants include Amylin Pharmaceuticals, EliLilly and Co., Pfizer Inc., Takeda Global Research & Development Center,Inc. and the Dairy Research Institute, and Quintiles will provide additional support.Members from academia will also be participating, including Harvard University,Oakland Children's Hospital Research Institute and Partners Healthcare, withadditional collaborators expected to join the undertaking in the future.

PubMed Health, of the U.S. National Library of Medicinedefines atherosclerosis (also known as arteriosclerosis) as hardening of thearteries. When cholesterol and fats build up in arteries, they form plaquesthat can block arteries, limiting blood flow and causing heart attacks orstrokes.

"Most of these biomarkers have been studied one at a time,and only measure a specific aspect of atherosclerosis," Dr. David Fryburg, aconsultant and former pharmaceutical company executive leading theatherosclerosis consortium, said in a statement. "Integrating these into acomprehensive computer-based disease model will allow us to identify thoseshort-term measures which best predict long-term clinical outcomes like heartattack and stroke. Successful development of this model can facilitate moreconfident testing of new therapies for atherosclerosis and prevention ofcardiovascular disease."

So far, more than 100 biomarkers have been studied inpatients with cardiovascular disease, biomarkers designed to measureimprovement or degradation of a patient's condition and how quickly it ischanging. Additional tests will allow researchers and pharmaceutical companiesto determine which therapies are proving beneficial, and by how much, inclinical trials. The biomarkers have not been measured in multiple studies,however, or examined systematically across a range of different patients. theconsortium will seek to identify the biomarkers that prove most accurate andinformative in terms of identifying cardiovascular risk.

Entelos' PhysioLab platform is a predictive biosimulationtechnology, and the company can design and calibrate platforms to answer arange of research questions through in-silico modeling.

Entelos signs contract with FNIH for biomarker consortium

About the Author

Kelsey Kaustinen

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