Morrisville-based contract research organization Worldwide Clinical Trials and Roivant-backed health care technology company Datavant are partnering to take on neurodegenerative diseases.
Some of the most common neurodegenerative diseases include Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Huntington's and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. According to Worldwide and Datavant, the most common neurodegenerative diseases cost the U.S. close to $800 billion annually.
Through the new partnership, Worldwide and Datavant – which recently banked $40.5 million in a financing round led by Roivant as well as co-founder and CEO of Datavant Travis May – are seeking to improve clinical research necessary for advancing treatments of such diseases.
Henry Riordan, executive vice president of medical and scientific affairs at Worldwide, said, “Drugs targeting [Alzheimer’s disease] have suffered an astonishingly low FDA approval rate of 0.4 percent, the lowest of all indications, and the last novel drug for AD was approved 15 years ago.
“There are multiple reasons for drug failures, and both companies believe that at least some of these reasons can be addressed by leveraging large integrated data sets."
Dave Bowser, executive vice president and general manager of global clinical development at Worldwide, notes that he and Eric Peraslis, chief scientific officer at Datavant, have worked together previously. Datavant is based in San Francisco but has significant relationships with the Triangle.
Since Datavant's rollout – shortly after Roivant landed a $1.1 billion equity investment led by SoftBank Vision Fund – Datavant has integrated 150 datasets, aimed at using artificial intelligence to improve the time and success of clinical trials as well as their costs.
As for Worldwide, the company has a significant history and expertise in neuroscience.
“The original Worldwide leadership team began with doctors with expertise in neuroscience and psychiatry and we have a very strong neuroscience team today,”Peter Benton, president and chief operating officer of Worldwide, told Triangle Business Journallast year, adding, “In fact, there is very little research in Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, etc., that we haven’t been a part of.”
“Neuroscience is our foundation. We’re proud of it and it’s a big reason why customers seek us out, and why we attract some of the best talent in the business.” he said at the time.
The first part of the new partnership between Worldwide and Datavant will involve a pilot study to look at opportunities to advance trial monitoring in areas of patient compliance and adherence as well as enrollment feasibility, according to the companies.
Aside from their new partnership, Worldwide and Datavant have both been active in other partnerships and deals in recent months.
Worldwide recently inked a new long-term alliance with fellow contract research organization KinderPharmfor pediatric drug development and research.
And for its part, Datavant said at the end of last month that it had acquired Massachusetts-based Universal Patient Key, whose client list includes the likes of Allscripts, McKesson and IBM Watson.
“Companies and nonprofit organizations in the health care space are increasingly keen to derive actionable insights from available data, but a significant obstacle is the fact that disparate data sets are held by different institutions," Datavant’s May said of the acquisition at the time, adding, "We want to make it easier for institutions to share data in a [HIPAA] compliant manner and this acquisition will make it easier for us to achieve that aim.”
At the beginning of the year, Datavant landed its first academic partner in Duke Clinical Research Institute.
Dr. Daniel Burch, chief medical officer of PPD Biotech, as well as Dr. Frank Rockhold, professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at DCRI, are both members of Datavant’s advisory board.
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