The combined company will operate as Sunbird Bio and focuses on advancing clinical-stage platforms with established potential to enhance patient care in Alzheimer’s disease, other neurological disorders, and early-stage cancer
Sunbird Bio merges with Glympse Bio. (Credit: Louis Reed on Unsplash)
Singapore-based biotech start-up Sunbird Bio has merged with bio-marker technology company Glympse Bio to advance the development of protein-based diagnostic platforms.
The combined company will operate under Sunbird Bio brand name, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, with operational headquarters in Singapore.
It combines the technology, resources, expertise, and capabilities of both the companies in protein diagnostics field to improve patient outcomes.
Sunbird Bio is a biotechnology company developing unique protein-based technologies to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders and early-stage cancer.
The company has a portfolio of clinical-stage diagnostic tests, developed using its two advanced technology platforms, APEX and Glympse.
APEX and Glympse platforms detect the property and activity of circulating proteins to offer researchers and clinicians insights that cannot be accessible from current tests.
They can address the need for cost-effective, sensitive, accessible, and reliable diagnostic tests to advance drug development and improve patient care, said the biotech company.
Sunbird Bio executive chair and CEO John McDonough said: “I am excited about the synergies and opportunities created by the integration of our two innovative companies, particularly the impact our combined diagnostic offerings could have on accelerating clinical research and the availability of new treatments for patients suffering from serious diseases.
“The APEX and Glympse platforms have the potential to dramatically improve standards of care for many diseases by overcoming the inaccessibility, invasiveness, and lack of reliability associated with current diagnostic approaches that limit their usefulness in drug development, disease detection, disease monitoring, and personalized treatment selection.”
APEX is indicated for the detection of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), which is difficult to diagnose and treat, by identifying aggregated amyloid-β in circulation from a blood draw.
The platform has been shown to identify peptide aggregation, which plays a key role in the pathogenesis of AD, accurately and with a very high correlation to gold-standard PET scans.
Sunbird Bio is also developing additional biomarker tests related to AD and other neurological disorders, expanding potential applications and the impact of APEX.
The Glympse is the first diagnostic platform to measure and analyse protease activity in the blood, for early and accurate diagnoses, better-informed treatment planning and monitoring.
The insights acquired from protease activity may improve clinical trials by supporting precise patient enrolment and reducing clinical trial lengths.
Furthermore, Sunbird Bio is currently partnering with biopharma companies and researchers to pursue early-stage cancer diagnostics with the Glympse platform.