Proteomic data derived from Immunovia’s IMMray™-platform allows differential diagnosis of difficult to distinguish autoimmune diseases

Immunovia AB, a diagnostic company that develops highly accurate blood tests for the early detection of cancer and autoimmune diseases, has announced results from a study in its development pipeline, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Proteome Research. These are the first proteomic data allowing a differential analysis of four different inflammatory rheumatic diseases (IRDs).

Early and correct diagnosis of inflammatory rheumatic diseases is presently a clinical challenge due to the variety of symptoms. The aim of the study was to achieve protein expression profiles distinguishing four systemic IRDs, that if left untreated, can lead to severe and sometimes permanent disability, increased morbidity, and premature mortality. A total of 316 serum samples collected from patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), ANCA associated systemic vasculitis (SV), Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), and Sjögren’s Syndrome (SS), and healthy controls were analyzed, using Immunovia’s recombinant antibody microarray (IMMray™). Differential protein expression profiling was examined using Wilcoxon signed-rank test and condensed biomarker panels could be identified reflecting each disease, using advanced bioinformatics and state-of-the-art classification algorithms.

Lead author, Mattias Ohlsson, Professor Computational Biology and Biological Physics at Lund University comments: “In this study, we were able to classify the included individual IRDs with high accuracy, as demonstrated by ROC Area Under the Curve (ROC AUC) values ranging between 0.96 and 0.80. The groups of IRDs could be separated from healthy controls at a ROC AUC value of 0.94. We believe this supports the rationale of using IMMray™ to reflect the biological complexity of autoimmune diseases.”

Patrik Dahlen, CEO of Immunovia, added: “Autoimmune diseases today pose a global health issue, affecting millions of people around the globe and there is an urgent need for refined clinical tools for early and differential diagnosis. These results suggest that the use of a multiplexed approach such as IMMray™ is highly suitable for decoding multifactorial diseases like autoimmune diseases. Early diagnosis in turn will help to prevent severe organ and tissue-related damages. We will incorporate these signatures and further evaluate them in our discovery program for autoimmune diseases.”

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