Canadian biotech startups Afynia LabIs a split of McMaster University in Ontario that has received $5 million in seed funding to commercialize blood tests for endometriosis – a disease that can bother uterine patients and cause such as chronic pelvic pain and fertility issues.
Endometriosis affects nearly 200 million people worldwide. Obtaining a diagnosis remains challenging, with some women reporting that doctors’ travel and invasive tests can take years or even decades before they are confirmed. This in turn delays treatment, which may reduce their pain or improve their chances of getting pregnant. Accelerating diagnosis, so treatment may be faster, is Afynia’s task.
Co-founder Dr. Lauren Foster (pictured left) explained that endometriosis is not a medical problem, but a syndrome or a series of different diseases that may have similar symptoms. Before starting a business, Foster was a professor at McMaster, twenty years after his early career as a research scientist.
The startup’s approach to detecting endometriosis deals with this complexity by looking at a range of biomarkers. Specifically, its technology is based on testing the presence of microRNA in the blood of a patient’s blood—mini molecules that play a role in switching or turning off genes.
microRNA panel
Its MicroRNA test for Afynia, called Endomir, is a role in comparing the expression levels of circulating microRNAs in patients’ blood by using an algorithm to find a set of these molecules, which are effective in comparing the expression levels of circulating microRNAs in patients’ blood, which are confirmed by surgically confirmed endometriosis The patient was diagnosed.
“We recognize that we need to go beyond a single biomarker and look at a panel – the panel has greater consistency and reliability to pick up the intrauterine phases of different types and diseases,” Foster told TechCrunch. Membranoectopicism.”
“We are studying biomarkers in different aspects of the disease. Therefore, they may be involved in new blood vessel growth, they are involved in inflammation, new nerve growth factors or new peripheral nerve growth associated with pain – thus, by targeting the disease’s These different parts, they, they combine them better than anyone else themselves.”
“We use markers that reflect these different physiological functions of the disease, but we put them in a single panel and we use our algorithm to determine whether they represent the risk of the disease,” adds.
She believes that microRNA-based testing does this better than other methods, such as trying to detect endometriosis by testing proteins, because the traces are more stable.
The microRNA approach also allows startups to find “combinations of markers that seem to work well” to pick up endometriosis and support understanding “what is confounding or distracting factors are.”
“Some of our competitors – it seems they don’t appreciate that,” she advised.
Leaving the academic community
and afynia(Formerly known as AIMAFoster said that Nemomire testing technology draws on the long span of her research career, focusing on ovarian regulation and endometriosis – which has been around 2015, which has Also included to view microRNA.
Foster has previously been involved in licensing patents for protein biomarkers for a European pharmaceutical company. But she said the process of dealing with business entities that lack a scientific academic foundation is frustrating. So, along with her PhD student and now co-founder Dr. Jocelyn Wessel (also in the above functional image) they decided to take their IP photos developed on MicroRNA and set up their own company in order to turn non-stop Invasive (in the sense that no surgical diagnosis is required) endometriosis is tested to the market.
Using microRNA for disease testing is nothing new, nor relying on microRNA’s panels for diagnosis – others are trying this method to pick up endometriosis – but Afynia believes it has an advantage because it is attacking the problem . There is already a foundation for academic discovery. (Instead of how many startups try to develop solutions to crack the commercially valuable problems they find.)
“I think we are really the first group to find it part of an academic lab that recognizes its usefulness,” said Dr. Jake Prigoff, chief medical officer of the startup. Decided to bring it to the market.”
“It’s a career in research, working on its work, slowly moving towards microRNA.” She said a penny in blind testing that could prove patients’ blood samples with surgeons passing invasive tests, she said After the things you master have “very high consistency”, it will drop.
“[Those results told us] We have something interesting here that is worth pursuing. “She continued. “Then obviously there is still a lot of work to continue to explore, perfect, improve the reliability, sensitivity of the test. ”
The startup declined to disclose any metrics about the accuracy of its Netomir test and surgical diagnosis when we asked – saying it wants to keep its data in the package until the regulatory approval process in Canada is completed for laboratory development Test (LDT).
As part of this process, it will propose its algorithm through clinical validation to demonstrate the clinical effectiveness of the expected use case – focusing on the diagnosis of patients with chronic pelvic pain or infertility, both of which are both therapeutic and available for use Managing or improving treatment symptoms can therefore have a tangible benefit to the patient.
Prigoff said the team is confident that they will be able to push the test to markets in North America later this year – they hope LDT will be approved in the next three months.
Canada will be the first market for Afynia to be tested (probably this summer) and will be launched early next year if everyone is planning.
Is the patient’s results better?
“Average patients can wait seven to eight years before they can diagnose [of endometriosis]some of them have been more than a decade. So while we cannot accurately quantify how much reduction we will be able to bring to these patients, we believe we will be able to significantly reduce this timeline. Prigoff added.
Patients need blood to be drawn for Afynia testing is a limitation of scalability. But he suggests there is a positive aspect here in terms of patient trust – think that elsewhere (and no needle is needed), such as using ultrasound and image analysis, and even testing molecular traces in saliva, may suffer in patients and responsible for ordering tests Lack of trust among clinicians.
“We think we have the best combination of different factors and become the market leader here,” he said. “The key is the balance between the level of trust and invasiveness of the patient, and the accuracy. Patients trust blood tests. And I think they have some doubts about things like saliva testing and you know, AI-generated imaging reports. I think so are clinicians.”
Another “differentiator” that Prigoff claims is cost, which suggests: “The way we do this allows us to expand to where I think the price point of some competitors has to land – based on their technology’s reuse.”
Additionally, as startups continue to develop their microRNA technology, Prigov also said they hope the test can only work with a drop of blood (i.e., from a finger stab) instead of requiring blood draw. Although, he stressed that this is impossible.
While endometriosis is where Afynia is currently putting all its energy into it, the startup hopes to apply its approach to ways to diagnose other women’s health problems – and plans to bring the channels of MicroRNA testing to the market in the coming years. Although Prigoff said they want to file a patent before they can do additional testing before publication, it still could happen.
Competitors also pursue non-invasive testing of women’s health issues, including California Nextgen JaneThis is an exploration of menstrual blood collected using tampons to test endometriosis and other health conditions; and dotlabanother American player is developing a blood-based endometriosis test.
Telemedicine Platform Ellara and research projects Citizens’ gratitude Work also to meet support from patients with endometriosis to support their condition or improve their understanding of the disease.
Afynia’s seeds are led by Bio-Rad Laboratories, the manufacturer of Lab Kit, with participation from the Impact America Fund, SOSV, Capital Angel Network and Gaingels.
Foster said before the funding that the startup had raised about $1.5 million in advance and supported some news from McMaster University and some of its seed investors, including SOSV and Capital Angel Network support, and some from new angel investors. York.
