Athos Announces Research Collaboration for Precision Medicine in IBD

On Monday, July 11, Athos therapeutics announced its plans for a research collaboration with Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, for precision medicine in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Athos will conduct multi-omic molecular and genetic analyses using deidentified IBD patient samples.  

“We are excited to collaborate with Dr. Randall Pellish and his team to identify novel molecular targets and subtypes of IBD patients,” said Dimitrios Iliopoulos, PhD, MBA, President and CEO of Athos, in the press release.  

He went on to say that, using biopsies from patients with active and inactive Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative colitis, and controls, “Lahey’s IBD patient biomaterials will be fed into our Athos Learning Computational Ensemble (ALCE) engine to further elucidate the complexity of IBD and the heterogeneity of drug responses.” 

According to the CDC, IBD is persistent inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract that can severely impact quality of life and, in some cases, can be fatal.  

As of 2015, approximately 3.1 million adults in the United States were diagnosed with IBD. Furthermore, IBD rates are varied by age, race, socioeconomic status, and more. 

The Mayo Clinic states that symptoms of IBD vary but may include diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain and cramping, blood in your stool, reduced appetite, and unintended weight loss.  

Due to the complex nature of IBD, precision medicine, or personalized medicine, may be an essential step in advancing care and improving the quality of life for IBD patients.  

The FDA says that precision medicine is an approach that is tailored to each patient rather than the traditional one-size-fits-all approach.   

“The availability of high-quality tissue resources linked to verified clinical data, which forms the basis for our collaboration with Lahey Hospital, will make this possible and allow for the identification of new disease subtypes and for the identification of novel drug targets,” stated Allan Pantuck, MD, MS, FACS, Chairman, Founder and CMO in the Athos announcement. 

Athos therapeutics and the collaborators on this project are hopeful about the advances and new information this research will bring forward. Potential outcomes of this collaboration may include better medication management, earlier therapeutic interventions, advanced diagnostic techniques, and many more.  

“This collaborative research project will allow us to work on vital questions addressing new ways of classifying and treating inflammatory bowel disease with the goal of developing meaningful, perhaps paradigm-shifting, treatment strategies,” concluded Randall Pellish, MD, Director, Lahey Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center, Division of Gastroenterology, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in the press statement.