NOVEL PROGNOSTIC BLOOD TEST FOR COVID19 PATIENTS
CovGENE®: PREDICTS SEVERITY OF DISEASE COURSE
One of the current clinical challenges in treating COVID is the inability to predict whether a person who tests positive will develop a mild, moderate or severe case. Having AMPEL’s prognostic tool would be a game-changer in identifying patients who may experience a severe course of COVID and to provide decision support for the type of medical treatments that may be helpful.
Roughly 85% of people who died from COVID19 through mid-August 2022 were 65 or older, a Wall Street Journal analysis of death-certificate data show. The rate is similar to 2020 peaks, before vaccines were available. Deaths trended younger for much of 2021. COVID19 is on pace to be the third-leading cause of death for the third straight year, said Dr. Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Since 2020, it has trailed only heart disease and cancer, significantly reducing life expectancy.
CovGENE® has been validated to predict those that may emerge with life-threatening COVID. The blood test is a simple, efficient and quick genomic blood test developed early in the pandemic and has been validated by a peer-reviewed longitudinal study in collaboration with Dr. Alexandra Kadl at the University of Virginia, revealing precision with a >90% rate of accuracy. In March 2023, CovGENE is market-ready following the publication of a peer-reviewed paper which defines the small group of human messenger RNAs that predict patients who may emerge with severe disease.
As described by multiple independent organizations, after a patient tests positive, the CovGENE® blood test will help determine the type of treatment and medicine needed in order to reduce the chances of hospitalization or a medical emergency.
And CovGENE® holds promise in predicting long COVID, an elusive diagnosis the medical community is still trying to fully understand.
HOW AMPEL’S CovGENE® BLOOD TEST WORKS
PROGNOSIS
A patient’s blood sample is processed to extract RNA (genes expression) from the cells. The data is uploaded to AMPEL’s Genomic Platform (AGP®) on the cloud to analyze patient RNA for a precise set of gene markers that predict whether the patient may experience a mild, moderate or severe disease course. The results give treating physicians a greater understanding of an individual’s current inflammatory response to SARS-Cov@ infection.
THERAPY
AMPEL’s breakthrough in precision and personalized medicine that can detect and predict the severity of COVID-19 in patients while also determining the best treatment options for each specific case. The novel approach, through the simple CovGENE® blood test, will ultimately accelerate the means of providing effective treatments to the right people at the right time and potentially stem the serious illness caused by SARS-CoV2 infection that can lead to lung damage or death.
“This unique collaboration with our colleagues from the University of Virginia has provided an easy and novel means to assess an individual patient’s response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and predict the clinical outcome,” said Dr. Peter Lipsky, AMPEL Chief Medical Officer, CEO and co-founder. “Now that this unique approach has been validated, we look forward to its rapid development as a precision medicine tool that can improve the outcome of patients with Covid-19 and reduce the number of hospitalizations, especially the most vulnerable.”
“We have come far in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in the past 2 years. Regardless, we still struggle to identify patients at highest risk for severe disease. Our study uses a gene analysis approach to identify an immune cell signature, distinct from other respiratory illnesses that correlates with worse outcome,” said Dr. Alexandra Kadl, lead author from the University of Virginia Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. “This knowledge will help evaluate patients’ immune profile with commonly, readily available assays to identify patients at risk for bad outcome that would benefit from closer monitoring and advanced therapies to aid their recovery.”
A MAJOR STEP FORWARD IN COVID-19 TREATMENT
Researchers and doctors are still trying to understand why some COVID-19 patients exhibit only mild symptoms while others experience severe illness. Now with a technology that has the potential to identify the patients who may progress to severe illness with increased likelihood of morbidity, AMPEL’s gene-based approach has the potential to recommend targeted therapies, healthcare providers have another tool with which to fight COVID-19.
“Having a precise way to identify the specific lung-damaging process in each individual is an important breakthrough that greatly improves outcomes in SARS-CoV2 infections,” said Dr. Peter Lipsky, CEO and Chief Medical Officer of AMPEL BioSolutions.
PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
AMPEL seeks to connect with Pharmaceutical companies as well as COVID Diagnostic companies interested in licensing the CovGENE® technology for a reflex test to predict patients who have mild or moderate illness or may emerge with severe illness and provide decision support for treatment options.