To conduct early intervention, flagship startup Etiome emerged to define the “biomass” of disease
Diseases are usually observed in binary ways – you either have the disease or you don't. Of course, biology works well. In the past few years of diagnosis, molecular changes were underway, leading to the development and development of the disease. Scott Lipnick, co-founder and president of Biotech Startup Etiome, said treatment interventions were conducted after the disease progressed, meaning they may not be effective.
Etiome requires a longer field of view. The company's platform technology characterizes disease and its progress over time. With this insight, it develops drugs that are suitable for specific disease points, in some cases, before symptoms appear. The goal is to stop or even reverse the disease.
“If we just say that this group is healthy and that this group is a little sick, that creates a very bad math problem,” Lipnick said. “But if we actually give people the proper labels to understand how far they are in terms of progress, how far away from the diagnosis, we do transfer things to a continuous measure of disease progression, which makes us more precise.”
For the past four years, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Etiome has been developing its technology. The young company emerged from invisibility on Thursday, revealing its technology and a preclinical pipeline that includes plans for liver and brain diseases.
The concept of early intervention based on identifiable biomarkers is not new. For example, Lipnick points to high levels of cholesterol, a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Now it is common to measure patients’ cholesterol to assess their heart health. Patients at high risk can take medications that lower cholesterol to reduce cardiovascular disease. What Etiome is doing is taking this concept further by defining the differences in disease progression called biomass.
Etiome was incubated in a pioneering lab that launched the creator flagship, and the company's research gave birth to the Messenger RNA Company Moderna. Lipnick, also the flagship’s groundbreaking origin partner, said the company’s concept came together after watching Moderna’s MRNA vaccine infectious disease, including its Covid-19-19 vaccine. The idea is to have similar effects on chronic and progressive diseases by taking a preemptive approach. But first, Etiome needs to better understand who is sick and when.
Lipnick said Etiome was formed after advances in artificial intelligence technology and increased access to electronic health records, Etiome was formed in the experience of data scientists at Harvard and UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Likeme. The startup's technology, called “Time Biodynamics”, found patterns in the data. These patterns define signals that help predict the rate of change.
At the molecular level, the technology looks for protein changes in tissues and cells to understand how they transition in health and disease stages. Etiome's supervised AI technology uses probability models to determine who gets sick and when they get sick, they have a time component. Labeling patient subgroups as different bioscales can enable scientists to represent disease continuously, Lipnick said.
Etiome is committed to developing treatments for metabolic, neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, as well as procancer. In metabolic diseases, the startup is investigating biointroduction drugs for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. These diseases have identifiable stages of disease progression and have measurable indicators such as fat percentage, fibrosis, and inflammation. The company adopts a similar approach to brain disease. In Alzheimer's disease, the company measures levels of beta-amyloid and tau.
“The disease sells differently, and different subtypes of people who may enter these stages in different ways, so ultimately allowing us to say who might respond best to which drug, and in the case of progress, that's the case.”
Depending on the disease, each bioscale may have a different medication. For example, Lipnick points to Parkinson's disease. By the time the disease is diagnosed, the patient's brain has been damaged. During the first few years of progress, there may be some goals related to the advanced stage. This means that treatment in the first decade window of Parkinson's disease will be different from when the patient is burdened with a heavy disease.
Etiome's approach is used with multiple types of medications, Lipnick says the choice will depend on disease and biomass. In the liver, startups are developing small molecules. For the brain, Etiome is studying small molecules and genetic drugs. Some of these procedures have been studied as independent therapy. But Lipnick said Etiome is also exploring a combination with existing therapies to treat different stages of the disease simultaneously, which could have a significant impact on disease reversal. He explained that the combination may provide a way to build the functional capacity of the disease-damaged organ.
In the long run, Etiome aims to develop drugs for new targets. However, because some signs that Etiome is studying are already available for drug use, the company is exploring how its time approach can be applied to known and proven disease targets. Etiome's technology reveals more information about when these targets will be active. This insight can help other companies. Lipnick noted that some procedures failed because they were not tested in the right patient population at the appropriate stage of the disease. If time biodynamics can identify the appropriate stage of the drug, then insight can help existing programs or even revive failed programs. This capability has attracted interest from pharmaceutical companies, and Lipnick said a partnership discussion is underway.
Etiome received $50 million in financing, a customary amount the company offered at launch. Lipnick said it is too early to talk about when its procedures will be tested for humans. Regarding the timing of Etiome's release, Lipnick said it was a leading position in partnership and pipeline development he expected this summer. The company is also ready to showcase more of its technical capabilities.
“We think people are just different, they are progressing at different rates, and we just say that's normal humans,” Lipnick said. “I just don't think that's it, and what our data shows us is that we can actually find a very powerful source of signals by looking at how disease progresses molecules and providing a higher solution to our identities.”
Photo: Malerapaso, Getty Images
