Invention novelty:
This technology is the first clinical assay to measure biological markers that reflect symptom severity and drug efficacy for mental disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia. This tool is useful for not only diagnosing such disorders, but also predicting them before onset, choosing the best treatments for individual patients, and monitoring treatment efficacy.
Value proposition:
This tool aims to improve diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment selection for brain disorders, and prevent disease onset in vulnerable individuals. It will also allow screening of druggable compounds for such disorders based on human biomarkers.
- Molecular diagnosis: This tool is a vast improvement over current methods to diagnose brain disorders, which are based primarily on clinical observations, and for which finding the appropriate treatments can take months to years.
- Non-invasive sample collection: Samples are collected by nasal brush biopsy, a quick and non-invasive procedure, followed by isolation of single cells for analysis. This method is especially advantageous when compared to methods like lumbar puncture, which is performed to detect biomarkers to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.
- Paradigm shift in psychiatry: This technology has the potential to change the way brain conditions are diagnosed and treated, and to improve the success rate of clinical trials during the development of novel drug treatments.
Technical details:
Johns Hopkins researchers have created a novel platform to detect RNA and protein biomarkers using single-cell analysis of nasal clinical samples, which indicate “state” and “trait” related to cognition, psychosis, and mood in disorders including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. This technology allows the diagnosis, prognosis, and selection of appropriate treatment regimens for individual patients with brain conditions in
clinical settings (even at community hospitals and local clinics), as well as screening of compounds by measuring biomarkers associated with disease state or drug response in
research settings. The simple, non-invasive assessment of nasal brush tissue can be performed regularly to monitor disease state and treatment response in children, younger and older adults, including those who are mentally unstable.
Looking for partners: To develop and commercialize the technology as a nasal brush biopsy kit to collect cells from patients with brain conditions, and detect biomarkers relevant to cognition, psychosis, and mood.
Stage of development: Pre-clinical
Data availability: Under CDA/NDA
