Poolbeg Pharma (POLB ) has submitted further patent applications for PredictViral™, its disease severity platform which the company has described as a ‘transformative product’.
The infectious disease pharmaceutical firm, a spin-out of London-listed Open Orphan, said it will continue to expand its PredictViral™ IP portfolio beyond this morning’s latest application.
The latest patent aims to predict whether an individual exposed to a respiratory virus (such as Influenza, RSV) will have a higher severity of disease and / or be more likely to be contagious.
Addressing investors, Poolbeg Pharma said it believes that the PredictViral™ platform offers diagnostic companies ‘a transformative product that will enhance clinical decision-making while differentiating their platforms at a time of intense competition in this market.’
The predictive biomarker patent applications were filed on behalf of Poolbeg by Open Orphan’s subsidiary, hVIVO. As agreed as part of the demerger process, ownership will ultimately reside with Poolbeg Pharma which will continue to commercialise the platform.
Poolbeg outlined that this will provide clinicians with a risk score for recently infected patients who are likely to experience a severe form of disease. Identifying viral infections early and triaging patients based on likely severity is vitally important in optimising clinical outcomes.
The Company highlighted that this can be ‘particularly important’ in diseases such as influenza where there is a limited window for successful treatment early in the disease.
Looking ahead, Poolbeg said it will continue to expand its IP portfolio ‘as required.’
The global market for diagnostic tools for infectious disease is rapidly growing and is expected to be worth over $19 billion per annum by 2025. Poolbeg said discussions are ongoing with multiple parties to continue this technology’s development and license it for commercial use.
Chief Executive Officer of Poolbeg Pharma, Dr Jeremy Skillington, commented: “Protecting the IP for such an innovative disease severity platform as PredictViral™ is important and key to our strategy of commercialising this cutting-edge technology. PredictViral™ will provide valuable information for assessing the best course of treatment for viral disease.
He added that, “It has the potential to help early interventions when needed and to reduce the spread of disease, even amongst those who are unaware they are infected - the importance of which has become very clear during the COVID-19 global pandemic.”
Reasons to POLB
Last week, Poolbeg Pharma said it has partnered with leading global biopharma services firm, Eurofins Genomics (‘Eurofins’), to complete RNA sequencing for Poolbeg of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) disease progression samples from human viral challenge studies.
The sequencing work marks a “key step” which will enable it to start AI analysis of its RSV data. This means Poolbeg will have full immunological datasets for RSV and influenza, which are ready to use with AI platforms to identify drug targets and products for these indications.
The project with Eurofins is expected to be completed by the end of 2021 and will involve next generation RNA sequencing of RSV transcriptomics, or disease progression data, which enables the tracking of the biology of immune responses in molecular detail during infection.
Sequencing of the samples will be tailored for incorporation into AI algorithms which will be the first time that human challenge trial immune data has been analysed using AI.
Poolbeg intends to unlock ‘unique insights’ from the dataset that the Group will translate into additional pipeline products which will be progressed using its capital light clinical structure.
RSV is a contagious virus that affects the respiratory tract of children and at-risk older adults; in severe cases, it can cause pneumonia and other life-threatening breathing difficulties.
RSV is considered a significant public health threat and is one of the leading causes of hospitalisation to at-risk older adults. There is currently no vaccine on the market for RSV.
Last month, Poolbeg Pharma highlighted the progress of its ongoing US patent assessment work after the official reviewing its application to protect its main asset, POLB 001, had indicated that the majority of the claims, including the main claim, would be “allowable”.
The infectious disease market is expected to exceed $250 billion by 2025 and the current market for influenza is already around $800 million. As a result of this fast-growing market, Skillington said the protection of Poolbeg’s intellectual property is “very important.”
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