B4-RNA
Detecting unseen extracellular RNA
Presymptomatic diagnosis for disease management
Opportunity
Many types of cancer are curable when detected in early stages, but there are not always studies or ways to identify them. Some tumors develop for months or even years before generating symptoms, leading to late diagnosis and consequently reducing the patient's chances of cure and survival time. Disease identification (including diagnosis and prognosis) from nucleic acids and minimally invasive liquid biopsies has the potential to improve patient survival rates by detecting disease, relapse or treatment resistance at an early stage. In particular, extracellular RNAs (exRNAs), molecules found in human and animal body fluids (blood, urine, plasma), can function as early indicators and help detect disease before the onset of noticeable clinical symptoms. However, there’s still a need to develop an effective method to more accurately characterize these exRNAs to enable their detection and/or later applications.
Solution
B4-RNA develops a novel method to detect extracellular RNAs in biological samples (blood), with special focus on highly structured RNAs, which are normally not identified by conventional sequencing and/or amplification methods available. The method can detect gene expression changes in tissues by sequencing extracellular samples and monitor diseases (diagnosis, prognosis, relapse, response to treatment, etc.) based on the analysis of liquid biopsies (blood). In this way, it aims at early detection of cancer so that patients have a better chance of being cured or increasing their life expectancy.
Team
Juan Pablo Tosar – Founder
PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology; Biochemist (IP Montevideo and Udelar).
