Wyss Diagnostics Accelerator seeks to fast-track disruptive diagnostic technologies to meet unmet critical needs
REGENSBURG, Germany & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Lifespin GmbH, based in Regensburg with offices in Boston, Massachusetts, announced today that it is one of 24 inaugural members of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University’s Diagnostics Accelerator (Wyss DxA) Industrial Participant Program (IPP). The purpose of the Wyss DxA IPP is to serve as a collaboration hub for the industry-facing component of the Wyss Diagnostics Accelerator, which seeks to identify and fast-track new medical diagnostic technologies to address unmet or underserved healthcare needs.
Originally formed in 2021 as a pilot program, the IPP recently has transitioned from its pilot phase into an official program within the Harvard system, and consolidated its base of initial industrial partners, including Lifespin.
In a recent press release from the Wyss Institute, the Institute said that, “the IPP serves as a platform to explore collaborations across the diagnostic development pipeline, from early stage discovery through delivery of new diagnostics. Additionally, the IPP allows for member companies to connect with subject matter experts and key opinion leaders within the Harvard ecosystem, as well as through the Wyss DxA’s external network to key stakeholders, including investors, regulators, payors, and other important entities.”
The Wyss DxA IPP is co-led by Rushdy Ahmad, Ph.D., and David Walt, Ph.D. Dr. Walt is a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, a Professor of Pathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a scientific co-founder of several life science companies.
“The mission of the Wyss DxA is to get transformative diagnostic tests to market and reduce disease burden for patients with major unmet needs. We aim to compress timelines and measure impact on lives,” said Dr. Ahmad. “We are pleased to invite Lifespin to join the Industrial Participant Program and support and foster meaningful partnerships within our stakeholder network.”
“We are honored to be among a very select group of technology companies invited to participate in the Wyss DxA IPP medical and scientific community, which is well-aligned with Lifespin’s mission to deliver new, disruptive innovation for high value health diagnostics problems,” said Dr. Ali Tinazli, CEO of Lifespin. “Collaborating with the world-class talent at the Wyss DxA IPP will provide Lifespin with an excellent technology transfer anchor point as we seek to bring products to the United States, and to further support our mission to advance the science of using digital metabolic profiles for the early detection of health conditions, staging of diseases, and monitoring treatment success.”
Advancing the Science of the Metabolome for Diagnostics
Lifespin, an emerging medical start-up, is building a highly scalable, automated diagnostics technology platform that utilizes advanced digitized metabolomic data, proprietary software technology, and A.I., to identify unique biomarkers in patient metabolism that may indicate both risk factors, and early-stage disease, with emphasis upon certain cancers, diabetes, obesity, and neurological disorders. Lifespin already has one of the largest and most comprehensive databases in the world of metabolic health profiles, more than 200,000 blood samples, across healthy and diseased individuals covering multiple age and biological sex groups as well as specific diseases in neurology, oncology, and inflammation. Current developments in general health testing, oncology, and neurology are expected to yield its first regulated products in human diagnostics in late 2023.
Use of the metabolome as a cost-effective and more precise diagnostics tool has long been of great interest to medical researchers. Technology that can identify direct correlations between variations in the human metabolome and the presence of disease could open the door to a far more customized and disruptive form of diagnostics and eventually become the gold standard for numerous indications and new diagnostic products where none exist today. Among these include precision drug monitoring for clinical, pharmaceutical and research settings, as well as precision nutrition for diabetes, obesity, dietary and lifestyle interventions.
Lifespin (www.lifespin.health) is a deep data company that seeks to detect distinct deviations in the human metabolism caused by diseases. Lifespin’s proprietary technology, which merges biology, deep data, artificial intelligence, and cloud platforms to deliver unique digital metabolic insights, enables a new field of precision diagnostics based on studies that show that pathogenesis impacts metabolism, causing specific changes in the presence and quantity of metabolites. Lifespin has built one of the world’s largest in-house biobanks that already consists of more than 200,000 human blood samples. Utilizing proprietary diagnostic technology, Lifespin is able to quantitatively capture individual metabolisms, i.e., up to hundreds of metabolite concentrations with a single Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) measurement. and perform in-house measurements of metabolomes, digitizing metabolic profiles that include billions of metabolic relationships. These digital metabolic profiles allow systematic mapping across various health conditions. Taken together, Lifespin’s technology and world-class database have the potential to enable differential diagnosis and early detection of health conditions, staging of diseases, monitoring of treatment success and personalized medicine, improving the gold standard in numerous indications and bringing about new diagnostic products, where none exist today (e.g., in some neurological diseases); precision drug monitoring for clinical, pharmaceutical and research settings; and precision nutrition for diabetes, obesity, dietary and lifestyle intervention. Lifespin’s cloud-based business model is built on its proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for diagnostics and health information and is globally scalable. Tests for detection of neurological, cancer, and inflammatory diseases are in development with first regulated products expected in 2023. Lifespin’s products offered to date are for Research Use Only (RUO) and are not for use in diagnostics. Lifespin’s advisory board consists of key opinion leaders such as James Rothman (Nobel Laureate in Physiology/Medicine, Sterling Professor of Cell Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT USA) and other prominent leaders in the relevant fields of study. Lifespin is ISO 13485:2016 certified.
Contacts
Dr. Ali Tinazli, CEO, [email protected] , +1 310-467-1112 and +49-160-257-3458
David Paine, Public Relations, PaineLab, [email protected], +1 949-233-0050