Miraca Life Sciences‘ InformTx testing helps doctors assess the response of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to certain drug treatments. The company has now expanded its therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) method by adding a test for Inflectra (infliximab).
In the U.S., InformTx assesses drug and anti-drug antibody blood levels for the biologic drugs Cimzia (certolizumab pegol), Stelara (ustekinumab), Simponi (golimumab), Remicade (infliximab), Humira (adalimumab), and Entyvio (vedolizumab).
Doctors will now be able to tell which patients respond well to the biosimilar Inflectra as a treatment for IBD.
“The addition of a biosimilar drug to our InformTx therapeutic drug monitoring gives clinicians who treat IBD patients with the biosimilar Inflectra the same critical information as with other biologics,” Richard Lash, MD, Miraca Life Sciences’ chief medical officer and executive vice president of operations, said in a news release. “Understanding patients’ drug and anti-drug antibody status is critical to guiding optimal care.”
InformTx uses enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technology that provides quantitative test results, historical test result data, and guidance from current medical literature published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The test requires small samples of peripheral blood, and results are available within five days.
Patients respond differently to biologic drugs, and several parameters influence that response, such as inflammation, prior treatment with other drug therapies, genetic factors, disease manifestation, body mass, characteristics of the immune response, and presence of anti-drug antibodies.
TDM helps doctors identify the four types of patients in terms of drug response: responders, initial responders, partial responders, and non-responders.
Miraca Life Sciences is a subsidiary of Miraca Holdings, Japan’s largest clinical diagnostics and laboratory testing service provider. More information about InformTx can be found here.
IBD is triggered by an abnormal reaction of the immune system to the digestive tract. The two major forms of this disease are ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease. These conditions share certain similarities in terms of manifestations and symptoms, but differ in the location and nature of inflammation: UC affects the rectum and the colon (the large bowel), while Crohn’s disease may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract.