Biohope
Transitioning Towards Precision Medicine

In the age of precision medicine, the kidney transplant arena has a different narrative. Even as breakthroughs in medicine have considerably improved the success rate of transplants to offer the best quality of life for patients with end-stage renal disease, the grim picture of high rates of graft rejection looms on the horizon. To counter graft rejection, patients are treated with immunosuppressive drugs on a long-term basis, which is generally associated with a host of adverse events. However, there is a catch. Every transplant recipient may need a different drug, and as many as 60 percent of them could be resistant to the current medication. Adding to the complexity, the current method of immunosuppressant (IS) selection and dosing is done empirically and does not follow a personalised approach. This sub-optimal treatment practice may result in either under-immunosuppression that leads to graft rejections or over-immunosuppression that exposes the patient to a host of opportunistic infections while increasing the risk of cancer and tumor.

Madrid-based Biohope is addressing this critical unmet medical need. The company is all set to unveil a novel, patented in vitro diagnostic tool that optimises the immunosuppressive therapy and personalises treatment for kidney transplant recipients for improved clinical outcomes, and for patients affected by autoimmune diseases and conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis research is underway, and for lupus a deep technological assessment is planned. Biohope, with its lead product, IMMUNOBIOGRAM® (IMBG)—in vitro diagnostic test—enables the selection of the most optimal immunosuppressive therapy (a combination of drugs/dosage) for each patient at a specific point in time to optimise therapy.

IMBG combines a biotechnological kit and software for data interpretation and analysis to empower physicians with simple and useful reports. “IMBG offers a personalised comparative evaluation of the patients’ sensitivity/resistance profile to a panel of the most commonly used IS in clinical practice, allowing physicians to predict and monitor the patients’ response to a specific IS,” explains Ricardo Brage, VP of business development, Biohope.

IMBG provides information that proves helpful for physicians to select the most appropriate immunosuppressive drugs for each patient and personalise the immunosuppressive therapy. For renal transplant recipients, an individualised immunosuppression regimen based on their response to IS can contribute notably to a decrease in graft rejection rates and severe adverse events such as metabolic disorders, opportunistic infections or malignancies. “More than 22 million patients worldwide can benefit from this unique technology,” states Brage. It also benefits health systems significantly. The use of IMBG would entail a potential risk reduction of graft failure, with savings of € 20,279 per high-risk transplanted patient in five years alongside an expected reduction in the adverse events rate that would generate savings of € 3,328 per non-high-risk patient in five years.

Biohope, with its lead product, IMMUNOBIOGRAM (IMBG)—in vitro diagnostic test—enables the selection of the most optimal immunosuppressive therapy for each patient

Touted as the biggest innovation in transplantation in the last 15 years, IMBG has been clinically tested in patients after more than one year of kidney transplantation, as a major challenge for clinicians is to improve graft survival after one year and reduce the risk of rejection. Proving its effectiveness, a national study conducted in Spain with 70 kidney transplant recipients yielded positive results. Likewise, a two-year international trial of IMBG with 200 patients carried out at nine centres across five countries in Europe and the U.S proved to be successful.

The buoyant Biohope team, with a definite focus on research and development, is firing on all cylinders to come up with more innovative products that are beneficial to the medical fraternity. With IMMUNOBIOGRAM for kidney transplantation ready for commercialisation, the next step for Biohopeis to adapt and validate the technology for other indications like liver transplants, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The company’s short-term plans on the anvil include forging strategic partnerships and expanding into Europe, North America and APAC in the next three years.