Enterome enters into a microbiome-based development collaboration with AbbVie in Crohn’s disease

ENTEROME Bioscience SA, a pioneer in the development of therapeutic solutions (drugs and diagnostics) based on a thorough understanding of the gut microbiome, announces that it has entered into a collaborative development agreement with AbbVie. The alliance is anchored around Enterome’s proprietary metagenomic biomarker portfolio and technologies that may enable the development of novel diagnostic products to support personalized therapies and the development of new drugs in microbiome-related diseases.

The companies will first collaborate to develop non-invasive monitoring tools of the gut microbiome in Crohn’s disease.

In this complementary partnership, Enterome’s expertise in the microbiome space and AbbVie’s extensive development capabilities in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) space present a clear opportunity to co-develop a customized solution enabling routine monitoring of Crohn’s disease by evaluating disease activity in order to make improved treatment decisions.

“The development of a new treatment paradigm in IBD depends on tight control that can only be achieved via accurate, routine disease activity measurement. Access to these data may allow the treating physician to prevent symptomatic relapse through early intervention and to avoid the potential over-use of therapeutics when not necessary. The ability to accurately analyze changes in the gut microbiome provides an ideal solution for the routine monitoring of IBD and other important diseases,” said Pierre Belichard, Chief Executive Officer of Enterome. “This development partnership, along with the others that we have signed in recent months, demonstrates a strong and growing interest from a broad range of healthcare companies in our microbiome-based approach to disease monitoring and management. With this leading technology, we intend to grasp the substantial opportunity the microbiome provides to develop more-effective therapeutic approaches for a broad range of important diseases.”

Crohn’s disease is chronic condition affecting millions of patients who require a life-long therapeutic approach to control symptoms, improve quality of life and minimize complications. There are few diagnostic tools available that allow the evolution of this disease to be monitored in a non-invasive way. The cause of this disease remains unknown but intestinal inflammation may arise or be propagated by abnormal host–bacteria interactions, indicating that the gut microbiome may have a critical role in disease pathogenesis.