Medicare Advantage startup Clover Health has started a biopharmaceutical division called Clover Therapeutics meant to use data on the health plan’s members to help inform the development of new therapies for age-related chronic diseases.
The company has signed an initial partnership with Genentech that will focus on understanding the genetic components that are related to a person’s risk of developing ocular diseases like macular degeneration.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
The two organizations will work together on designing studies, collecting samples and analyzing resulting data.
Cheng Zhang, the head of Clover Therapeutics, tied his group’s mission into the larger ambitions of Clover Health. Clover touts its existing lognititidual data on patients as well as its diverse patient base as contributing to its ability to run more effective and efficient clinical trials.
“We think of ourselves as being in the overall business of improving the outcomes of patients, not just being another health insurer,” said Zhang, pointing to the lack of effective therapies for chronic progressive conditions like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
“We’re already built a long-term partnership with our members and in addition to the care we’re already delivering along that journey, we’re attaching additional research touchpoints.”
San Francisco-based Clover Health was founded in 2014 and has grown to cover around 40,000 Medicare Advantage patients. The company has raised more than $900 million over its history, but has suffered from issues ranging from recent layoffs to conflicts with lab testing companies.
Clover Therapeutics will be initially focused on combining the clinical insights gleaned through Clover Health with new data sources including digital biomarkers, genomics and imaging collected on the company’s research population.
Clover Health has already developed machine learning models that use EHR data, claims data and socio-demographic information to help identify high-risk patients. The idea is to use these same techniques (along with real-world genomic and quantitative molecular data) to build subgroups of patients that will help with targeted development of therapeutics.
“One of the major bottlenecks in drug development is our fundamental lack of understanding about the drivers of diseases. Animals models and computer models are useful, but the best way to understand how human disease works is to look at humans with diseases,” said Marcel van der Brug, Clover Therapeutics’ chief scientific officer.
The company has used similar techniques before to inform clinical care, launching an in-home primary care service aided by genomic testing.
While Clover Health patients will be the main research base for Clover Therapeutics, Zhang said participants will not be limited to the company’s MA plan members.
“What we’re looking to do is build a long term patient research community with a dynamic patient base and research touchpoints independent to the insurance business,” Zhang said.
Outside of the value created by taking part in clinical research that has the potential to produce new therapeutics, Clover is pitching the benefit of better understanding about their conditions and specific health situations.
“What we’re finding when we’re engaging them is most have never been invited to participate in clinical research before and they are excited about the prospect to learn more about the disease they or their family members have,” van der Brug said.
Clover Therapeutics will work with research collaborators as well as develop its own independent research programs for its drug discovery efforts.
“As far as we know there’s no model in which an insurer has set up a drug discovery program integrating research and clinical care, which has traditionally been thought of as separate, but in reality can be quite synergistic,” Zhang said.
“We want to be able to help the patients of today through Clover Health and advance the innovative treatments of tomorrow at Clover Therapeutics.”
Picture: DrAfter123, Getty Images
