The thought of a woman dying in childbirth seemed far-reached, Matthew Cooper said, until his own wife nearly lost her own life a few years ago. Her pregnancy was complicated by preeclampsia, a common but highly dangerous condition that is a leading cause for fetal and maternal illness – even death.
The harrowing experience helped Cooper germinate the idea to launch Carmenta Bioscience – a startup that is developing a serum-based test for preeclampsia. The two-year-old company has harnessed diagnostics technology from Stanford University.
“The criteria for monitoring and diagnosing preeclampsia hasn’t changed since the early 1900s,” Cooper said. “What we’re doing is modernizing the diagnosis, looking at molecular markers in the serum of mothers.”
Conducting a “full-blown” proteomics and genomics analysis of women who had preeclampsia versus those who did not, Carmenta uncovered a panel of six different proteins in the serum of mothers with preeclampsia that were distinctly different from the mothers that didn’t have the condition. Coupled with a proprietary algorithm that differentiates the two, Carmenta’s test is showing to be more than 99 percent accurate in the clinic, Cooper said. Carmenta plans to commercialize a preeclampsia test next year, he said.
Carmenta, formed in 2012, is a member of Stanford’s StartX accelerator. It has received $2 million in seed funding from a variety of angel investors, Cooper said, including personal checks from Venrock’s Camille Samuels, Arch Venture Partners’ Nathaniel David and Facebook CIO Timothy Campos.
Preeclampsia, found in 5 to 8 percent of pregnant women, is a leading cause of preterm birth – and “the main cause of these million dollar babies,” Cooper said. The complication is distinguished by high blood pressure and signs of damage to the organs, particularly the kidneys – but there’s a real difficulty in diagnosing this condition.
High blood pressure is common among pregnant women, but it’s only indicative of preeclampsia a fraction of that time. Some cases can be detected by measuring levels of protein leakage in a woman’s urine. But that’s not always accurate, or timely enough to help prevent dangerous complication. Because when it’s preeclampsia, the only cure is delivering the baby, stat.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
This is why a molecular diagnostics test could help doctors intervene early, Cooper said, using simple but effective measures like encouraging bed rest and daily doses of aspirin to head off early labor.
The company recently completed its initial clinical study of the diagnostic test a few months ago, evaluating its efficacy in more than 150 patients. The test came back more than 99 percent accurate, Cooper said. It’ll begin a larger clinical trial of about 300 women by the end of the year.
Carmenta is developing two tests – the first one, which is being tested in the clinic, detects preeclampsia among symptomatic women. The second product is a test for asymptomatic mothers – a predictive test that could figure out if a woman could develop preeclampsia.
“It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that women and babies still die in childbirth,” Cooper said. “But hey, we’re trying to fix that.”
