Syntrix Biosystems, Inc. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Psoriasis is a chronic, genetically influenced, remit
Syntrix Biosystems, Inc. — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Health and Human Services.
- Amount
- $225,000
- Agency
- Department of Health and Human Services · National Institutes of Health
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Solicitation
- PAR13-250
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- WA
- Period
- —
Description
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Psoriasis is a chronic, genetically influenced, remitting and relapsing scaly and inflammatory skin disorder that affects 1-3% of the world's population, resulting in total annual costs of 5.2 billion in the United States in 2012. Approximately 20% of patients with moderate-to-severe chronic plaque psoriasis require phototherapy and/or a variety of systemic treatments, where methotrexate (MTX) is the mostly widely used oral systemic agent. Despite the relative effectiveness of MTX, as a monotherapy, it does not achieve greater than a 75% reduction in the baseline psoriasis area-and-severity index (PASI 75) in 40% of patients, and fails to achieve remission (i.e. gt PASI 90) in 60% of patients. Furthermore, up to 30% of patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis discontinue oral MTX primarily because of intolerance to the drug. While much effort has been directed to identifying the mechanism behind poor and/or toxic responses to MTX based on genetic factor and q