Last year, Accord Biosciences was awarded a Phase II National Institutes of Health (NIH) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of $1.3M to develop a point-of-care diagnostic for pulmonary arterial hypertension. This diagnostic tool will utilize Accord’s Nogen nitric oxide technology to quantify levels of nitric oxide metabolites and carriers in blood, including s-nitrosothiols and establish correlations between these levels and other established indicators of pulmonary hypertension.
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a life-threatening cardiovascular disease affecting the pulmonary arteries—the central vessels that transport blood directly from the heart to the lungs for oxygenation—and ultimately resulting in right heart enlargement and possibly death. It has no known cure, and its cause is not fully understood. PAH is confirmed to affect several hundred thousand people worldwide, with an average life expectancy after diagnosis of 2.8 years when not medically managed. Experts agree that the disease is grossly under diagnosed and that diagnosis is typically delayed 2 years after disease onset.
The pharmaceutical market for PAH is growing rapidly; PAH drug sales grew from zero in 2001 (when the FDA approved the first PAH drugs) to $2.7B in 2009 and will reach $4B by 2015. However, these therapies are only somewhat effective and current clinical practice can only conclusively diagnose and categorize PAH by invasive, expensive and risky heart catheterization. Accord’s POC PAH diagnostic will provide a versatile tool to screen more patients earlier, provide risk stratification, and tailor management post diagnosis for optimized outcomes and reduced costs.
The company has recently relocated to Sylvania, OH from Ann Arbor, MI. Their new headquarters strengthens Accord’s access to Ohio‐based cardiovascular clinical and industry resources.
Accord Biosciences will be presenting at OneMedForum NY 2011.