Revive Therapeutics entered into a license agreement with Lawson Health Research Institute for the worldwide exclusive rights to novel blood biomarkers that characterize long COVID. The discovery of the biomarkers identified by a research team at Lawson, led by Dr. Douglas Fraser, was recently published in the journal, Molecular Medicine.
Currently, there is no FDA-approved clinical diagnosis of long COVID and it is estimated to occur in at least 10% of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. More than 200 symptoms have been identified with impacts on multiple organ systems — including fatigue, brain fog, difficulty breathing, and cardiovascular symptoms ranging from chest pain and arrhythmias to sudden cardiac death—but it remains a diagnosis of exclusion with an unknown biological basis.
The CDC estimates that 7.5 percent of U.S. adults have long COVID symptoms. David Cutler, PhD, a professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates in a recent research disclosure that the total economic cost of long COVID could be as much as $3.7 trillion.
Revive Therapeutics and Lawson will work together in completing the development of a qELISA laboratory test kit and a lateral flow assay point of care device for rapid testing of long COVID. In addition, Revive Therapeutics will evaluate the potential of the long COVID test as a companion to Bucillamine – a potential treatment for long COVID disease.
Under the terms of the agreement, Revive Diagnostics Inc., a subsidiary of Revive Therapeutics, has gained exclusive worldwide rights to intellectual property for the development and commercialization of novel blood biomarkers that characterize long COVID disease. The intellectual property includes PCT/CA2023/050145 entitled “Blood Biomarkers in Long-COVID19”; PCT/CA2023/051292 entitled “Biomarkers in Long-COVID19”; and US Provisional Patent Application No. 63/433,425 entitled “Diagnosis and Treatment of Long-COVID”. WORLDiscoveries, the joint commercialization office of Lawson and Western University manage the intellectual property.
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