Dr Alexandre Akoulitchev, Oxford BioDynamics, talks to EPM about biomarkers aiding diagnostics and new treatments
Dr Alexandre Akoulitchev
Who are you and what do you do?
Dr Alexandre (Sasha) Akoulitchev, FRSM, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Oxford BioDynamics.
Oxford BioDynamics (OBD) has developed an industrial standard epigenetic biomarker discovery platform, EpiSwitch. The biomarker signatures identified by our technology stratify responsive and non-responsive patients for the pharma and biotech industries, as they develop companion diagnostic applications for new treatments.
OBD builds support for better clinical decisions on therapeutic treatments by identifying enriched clinical trial cohorts that can be developed into unique patented stratifications.
Our EpiSwitch platform has a number of applications for drug developers and healthcare practitioners including predictive and prognostic read outs, residual disease monitoring and direct diagnostics. The range of applications and validations performed by OBD covers many indications: including oncology and autoimmune, neurodegenerative and metabolic conditions. Crucially EpiSwitch identifies biomarkers and provides readouts non-invasively, using peripheral blood samples.
What have you been focused on recently?
Our recent focus has been on predictive biomarkers that help to identify non-responders to treatment among rheumatoid arthritis patients. This work has been now completed and will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual meeting in San Francisco.
We have also been actively involved in looking for predictive biomarkers for cancer immunotherapies. This is a very competitive therapeutic market, with all leading pharma companies engaged and producing promising efficacy results. The rate of response among patients, however can be as low as 30%. In this scenario predictive companion diagnostic biomarkers that identify a responsive population to a given therapy, become critical for success in clinical trials and competitor differentiation.
What is your latest innovation?
When we set up Oxford BioDynamics we expected to focus only on the application of our technology in oncology. We came to realise we could apply it effectively in other disease areas as well, much of our innovation today focuses on disease areas beyond oncology.
We were very pleased to see that out technology performs extremely robustly in systemic stratifications related to Alzheimer’s disease. In the neurodegenerative space we are also actively working on ALS diagnostic and prognostic applications.
We have also being using the EpiSwitch to monitor how specific biomarker profiles disseminate between themselves for a number of autoimmune conditions – such as Crohn’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes Type 1 and Ulcerative Colitis.
What does it mean for the pharmaceutical sector?
It has long been suspected that epigenetics has an essential part in control over phenotype differences and complex stratifications. EpiSwitch is a unique patented robust technology developed to industrial standards, and delivering a series of stratifications – from predictive to prognostic.
EpiSwitch™ has the potential to provide universal standards of support for the development of the types of companion diagnostic tools that are essential for the successful enrichment of clinical trials, and ultimately to make cost savings in healthcare through better targeted treatment and improved patient outcomes.
What are your future plans?
In our agreements with our pharma and biotech partners in the US, Asia and Europe we are building on our current momentum to expand the services we provide laterally, by providing patient stratifications across a greater number of therapeutic areas; and vertically, by increasing the size of cohorts in a given therapy area, thus generating more data.
We are negotiating with many pharmaceutical companies on work directly related to their future trials, and we continue to provide epigenetic stratification to our partners, delivering data that they can use in their drug discovery, clinical development, regulatory and marketing activities.