Exagen Inc. and Queen Mary University of London, announced the execution of a research collaboration and exclusive license agreement. The collaboration will focus on development and optimization of patent-pending precision medicine approaches, based on RNA expression signatures, to personalize therapeutic agent selection for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Both parties will contribute to the development of the patent-pending assays, leading to the commercialization of novel molecular assays that segment patients according to gene expression in their synovial tissue biopsies.

Building on Prof. Costantino Pitzalis and Dr. Myles Lewis's molecular pathology definition of disease evolution and treatment response, Exagen has acquired an exclusive global license to a family of patent-pending assays pertaining to RNA expression patterns used in the prediction of patient response to commonly prescribed csDMARD and biological therapeutics for RA. The assays utilize minimally invasive synovial tissue biopsies as input, which are then assessed for RNA expression data. These data are then run through proprietary algorithms that provides actionable insights on predicted csDMARD and biological therapeutic response for RA patients based on an individual patient's RNA expression patterns.