BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Curidium Medica plc is poised to commercialize its Homomatrix platform technology for classifying patients with central nervous system disorders into different subgroups, according to the underlying genetic cause.

The company has demonstrated proof of principle, using the technology to develop a blood diagnostic test that can allocate patients with schizophrenia/bipolar disorder into one of four subgroups.

"We now have everything in our hands to start doing deals," Anne Bruinvels, CEO, told BioWorld International.

Curidium's test is based on the levels of expression of 28 genes in blood samples from schizophrenia/biopolar disorder patients, identified originally by comparison with normal controls.

The genes include known drug targets, and the company is filing patents around novel genes and targets that are specific to particular subgroups.

While currently the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders is based largely on clinical signs and symptoms, the company said diagnosis now can be made at a biological level. Generally, only a minority of patients respond to a particular drug treatment, and the London-based Curidium said the test could lead to more accurate prescribing of marketed products, reducing the cost of inappropriate treatment and leading to better patient care.

The diagnostic could be a tool for drug discovery, enabling the development of specific treatments aimed at the subgroups of patients. It also could be used to select likely responders in clinical trials. "It is well-known that chronic diseases are heterogeneous. When you go to larger Phase III trials, the patient population automatically becomes more heterogeneous. This provides a good rationale for selecting appropriate subgroups," Bruinvels said.

Homomatrix uses a combination of pattern recognition tools and algorithms to analyze gene expression profiles. The system focuses on genes that do not occur in the control group, but that not all patients have in common, to avoid picking out those genes that are associated with the downstream pathology unleashed by the disease.

Fifteen different criteria are applied to hone in on genes of interest. These are then clustered to see which patients have which gene expression. "It's very striking, you get really distinct subgroups," Bruinvels said. "Our test would give a clinician the chance to take a blood sample and say which treatment would be best."

Bruinvels had the idea for Homomatrix when she was working for the human tissues drug discovery services company Pharmagene plc (now Asterand). She started the company in 2001 with £80,000 (US$157,315) from family and ex-colleagues, and subsequently raised £300,000 from business angels in 2004. Then in July 2006, Curidium joined the Alternative Investment Market in London by reversing into a cash shell, raising £1.5 million at the same time.

Apart from using its technology to identify which patients will respond to which drugs, Curidium is applying it to rescue compounds that have failed in clinical trials, or reposition products that were developed for other indications. That has enabled the company to build an in-house portfolio of four compounds that are lower risk because they have been tested in humans.

"The results that come out give us plenty of opportunities to de-risk drug discovery and development," Bruinvels added.