Ardigen and BioCollective partner to detect early signs of Parkinson’s Disease for better diagnosis and treatment

Kraków, Poland and Denver, CO, USA, 18th November 2020 / Sciad Newswire / Ardigen and The BioCollective today announced a research collaboration aimed at the development of the world’s first microbiome-based biomarker candidates for Parkinson’s Disease. The goal of their joint venture is to facilitate earlier diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, along with better disease management for Parkinson’s patients and their clinicians. The partnership will pair Ardigen’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Microbiome Translational Platform with The BioCollective’s metagenomic and patient metadata from banked Parkinson’s patients’ stool samples. Both companies will provide resources to support the project and make use of their expertise in microbiome studies. Ardigen's technology employs state of the art bioinformatics and AI to identify metagenomic features that are typical for a given group of patients. Those features are interpreted as functional units that can then be translated into candidates for biomarkers, and further therapeutic development. The core of the platform is a proprietary algorithm capable of using whole metagenomic information from a cohort to retrieve microbiome-derived signals that may be responsible for a patient’s status. This joint effort allows Ardigen to capitalize on The BioCollective’s extensive expertise in Parkinson’s Disease microbiota, as well as the company’s fecal bank, and select metagenomic indicators that can be used to identify early onset Parkinson’s diagnosis or disease progression biomarkers in the microbiome. "We are thrilled to start working with The BioCollective to develop microbiome-derived biomarkers applying our breakthrough technology powered by Artificial Intelligence," said Kaja Milanowska-Zabel, SVP General Director of Microbiome Unit of Ardigen. Martha Carlin, CEO of The BioCollective, adds, “Parkinson’s is an incredibly complex systemic disease, and clues to untangling that complexity are increasingly revealed in the microbiome. We believe that this partnership will help progress our collective understanding of the microbiome’s role in human health, and that combining our microbiome expertise with exciting AI tools like those developed by Ardigen will translate exponentially to combat diseases like Parkinson’s, and beyond.” ENDS Notes to editors: About Ardigen Ardigen is harnessing advanced AI methods for novel precision medicine. The company accelerates therapy development by designing immunity, decoding microbiome, analyzing biomedical images and providing digital drug discovery services. Ardigen's team is rooted in biology and holds deep expertise in bioinformatics, machine learning, and software engineering. The company's in-house datasets, together with advanced AI platforms, empower the development of effective precision therapies. About BioCollective The BioCollective is accelerating microbiome discovery and therapeutics development by building unique tools that make research and findings more accurate, repeatable, and verifiable. The BioCollective team fuels innovative health solutions across the industry, leading the field in understanding and analyzing the microbiome’s multi-system impact on human health. The company has pioneered methods in sample collection, homogenization, processing, banking, data and computational biology using their BioFlux™ technology, and leads the field in unlocking the value of human fecal samples to understand and unlock our most pressing health conditions. For more information, please visit www.thebiocollective.com. For further information, please contact: Corporate contacts Barbara Wyroba Ardigen T: +48-539-730-118 E: barbara.wyroba@ardigen.com Find out more at: https://ardigen.com Merredith Branscombe The BioCollective T: +1 720– 295-3271 E: Merredith.branscombe@thebiocollective.com Find out more at: TheBioCollective.com Media contacts Juliette Craggs / Katie Warren Sciad Communications T: +44 (0)20 3405 7892 E: juliette@sciad.com