BioScale Changes Name to ProterixBio, Focus on Pulmonary Diagnostics and Management

BioScale, Inc. has changed its name to ProterixBio, Inc. to mirror the company’s new strategic path centered on high value clinical applications including disease management services and diagnostics products, according to a May 3 news release.

ProterixBio is developing pioneering products to transform chronic disease management. The company will focus initially on pulmonary disease such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis (CF), and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Headquartered in Billerica, Mass, the company is dedicated to providing solutions that benefit patients and reduce healthcare costs.

The company plans first to zero in on COPD, a progressive disease that causes reduced air flow in the lungs and leads to significantly increased morbidity and mortality. The ultimate goal is to reduce the frequency and severity of exacerbations, hinder disease progression, lower morbidity and mortality, and decrease the overall cost of the disease.

“ProterixBio seeks to transform chronic disease management by integrating novel bioclinical analytics with supporting digital health technologies,” Grace E. Colon, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of ProterixBio, said in the news release. “New approaches are needed to improve both the effectiveness and the efficiency of caring for these patients. At ProterixBio, we are striving to improve health outcomes by combining our proprietary, comprehensive biological assessments with tools that proactively engage patients, clinicians and caregivers in the management of disease.”

Already, ProterixBio has begun to make progress in accomplishing the new objectives by:

• Recruiting a leading scientific board of experts in diagnostics of inflammatory and pulmonary diseases.
• Establishing alliances with top organizations to gain access to high quality patient samples and develop a pipeline of complex diagnostic tests.
• Quickly developing validated, high quality pulmonary and inflammatory biomarker tests.
• Planning for the transformation of facilities for assay development into GLP- and CLIA-ready laboratories.
• Collaborating with leaders and providers of digital health systems and new healthcare delivery and disease management models.

Dr. Patricia Finn, Professor and Chair of Medicine at the University of Illinois, Chicago School of Medicine, said she is happy to work with the ProterixBio team to develop next generation pulmonary disease management approaches.

“The community needs additional tools to assess pulmonary patients and to provide more integrated healthcare solutions,” said Finn, a  past President of the American Thoracic Society.

Dr. Fernando Martinez, Executive Vice Chair of the Joan and Sandy Weill Department of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College also weighed in on ProterixBio’s new focus.

“Clinicians and investigators are continuously looking for new ways to better phenotype our patients with serious pulmonary diseases, including COPD and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis,” Martinez said. “We look forward to collaborating with ProterixBio on clinical studies designed to test their biomarker hypothesis in order to better assess our COPD patients and manage their disease.  These approaches will enhance the evolving view highlighting the importance of personalized or precision medicine.”

To advance the mission, ProterixBio established a Scientific Advisory Board of top international physician researchers and industry leaders in pulmonary disorders and related diseases.

ProterixBio will also focus on leveraging its ViBE platform to further its bioassay pipeline. ViBE is a new protein measurement technology to enable clinically sensitive and specific automated Acoustic Immunoassays. The company also plans to collaborate with biopharma companies, and use its pulmonary infrastructure to develop new treatments for lung disorders. Additional plans include the application of in-house technologies to other disease areas such as oncology and neurodegenerative diseases.