Scipher Medicine

Scipher Medicine is a precision immunology company that matches each patient with their most effective therapy and also has partnerships in other disease areas. Scipher has a proprietary platform called Spectra, which it uses to identify the unique disease signature of a patient, predict drug response to approved drugs, and identify novel drug targets for patients that are not responding to existing therapies. The AI platform learns to provide further insight as it interprets more patient molecular datasets. Scipher’s platform is a disease representation built on experimental research and is a network map of human biology, which includes how proteins expressed from the human genome interact to cause disease. The reference map of the protein-protein interactions network—the human interactome—was created by co-founders Joe Loscalzo and Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Scipher partners with leading payers, health care providers, and pharmaceutical companies to bring solutions to patients with autoimmune diseases.

Scipher’s first commercial product, PrismRA, is a blood test that can predict which patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are less likely to respond to tumor necrosis factor inhibitor therapies (TNFi), such as Humira and Enbrel, so these patients can seek alternative approved drugs. According to Scipher, the TNFi class of drugs is prescribed to about 90 percent of RA patients worldwide but is clinically effective in about one-third of those prescribed. As of December 2021, one year after the launch of PrismRA, 15 percent of prescribing rheumatologists were reported to have used PrismRA.

PrismRA is a blood-based molecular signature response classifier (MSRC), which uses RNA sequencing data combined with clinical factors to make predictions. RNA sequencing is a method to profile and measure expression levels of genes that are used as predictive biomarkers.

Scipher Medicine partnered with Galapagos in 2020 to jointly validate novel IBD targets that were discovered by the Spectra Platform. In 2022, Galapagos announced it would move selected targets to the next phase of drug development. Scipher will receive a milestone payment from Galapagos and be eligible to receive additional payments for regulatory and sales milestones.

Scipher Medicine partnered with the cardiac drug discovery company TARA Biosystems to address a critical unmet need for therapeutics in cardiac laminopathies. Cardiac laminopathies are associated with mutations in the LMNA gene and result in electrical and mechanical problems in the heart. The Spectra platform will analyze data from TARA’s Biowire II LMNA disease models to identify novel targets upstream and downstream of LMNA signaling.