Prometheus Biosciences – Bringing breakthrough diagnostic and therapeutic solutions to eradicate Gastrointestinal Diseases

The Silicon Review

Healthcare is transforming, and it is imperative to leverage new technologies to generate new data and support the advent of precision medicine (PM). Recent scientific breakthroughs and technological advancements have improved our understanding of disease pathogenesis and changed how we diagnose and treat disease, leading to more precise, predictable, and robust health care customized for the individual patient. Genetic, genomics and epigenetic alterations appear to be contributing to different diseases. Gastrointestinal (GI) diseases are complex and debilitating disorders that affect millions of people worldwide. Currently, available therapies attempt to treat symptoms with "one-size fits all" solutions that don't work effectively for many patients.

Prometheus Biosciences is a forward-thinking biopharmaceutical company dedicated to disrupting the treatment paradigm of Gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. The firm does this by discovering and developing a broad portfolio of novel precision therapeutics and diagnostics that will meaningfully impact patient care. Prometheus Biosciences' mission is to create a new paradigm inpatient care. Its powerful precision medicines platform leverages proprietary technology to translate complex and deep patient data into precision therapeutics and diagnostics, providing an effective treatment solution for every GI patient.

The Prometheus 360™ Platform

It is a precision medicines platform that delivers individualized treatments to GI Patients. It is also the world's largest GI Biobank. For the past 15 years, the firm has built a highly curated database and biorepository containing more than 200,000 samples linked to extensive longitudinal clinical data from over 20,000 patients. This platform does several tests and profiling in order to prescribe the precision treatment for a particular GI disease. The tests include;

ImmunomX Profiling: Where the samples are subjected to 'big data'-style profiling including genetics, serologic, transcriptomics, and microbiomics, to uncover unprecedented insights about immunological networks that drive GI disease is done.

Drug Target and Biomarker Discovery: The firm utilizes state-of-the-art data mining and machine-learning analysis approaches. The firm re-stratifies complex GI diseases into biologically homogeneous subgroups to discover novel druggable targets with unique biomarkers.

Precision Therapeutic Products: Prometheus develops targeted therapeutic options that offer superior efficacy to patients and an accelerated path to the market. In parallel, they also design companion diagnostic tests to predict response to these new therapies, ensuring the right patient's right drug.

Targeted Therapeutics

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is complex and heterogeneous. A 'one-size-fits-all' standardized treatment may not be effective for many patients. Almost 75% of the 2 million patients in the US who have IBD are refractory to first-line biologic therapy. Prometheus Biosciences is pioneering a precision medicine approach for the treatment of IBD. It merges access to hundreds of thousands of patient samples with advances in machine learning and data mining tools to understand the link between patients' symptoms and disease-driving biomarkers. The firm uses these breakthroughs to identify novel therapeutic targets and diagnostic tests to address the unmet medical needs.

Innovative Diagnostic

The industry-leading GI diagnostic portfolio provides actionable results across the patient journey. From diagnosis to treatment, disease monitoring, and remission, the Prometheus Biosciences' suite of tests is purpose-built to guide patient care decisions confidently. Its diagnostic platform addresses many unmet medical needs of GI patients. Personalizing each patient's path to remission through diagnosis and risk stratification, assessing and optimizing biologic therapy, and non-invasively monitoring disease activity ensures that the physicians and patients can be confident in their disease management plans. Prometheus's strong relationship with GI physicians and key opinion leaders began with introducing the company's innovative diagnostic tools that have helped physicians manage the IBD patient journey. Its GI Biobank and advanced data mining techniques to develop breakthrough diagnostic tools that help patients and physicians from diagnosis through disease progression, therapy selection, and monitoring.

The mastermind behind the triumph of Prometheus Biosciences

Mark McKenna serves as the President, member of the board, and Chief Executive Officer of Prometheus Biosciences. Before joining Prometheus Biosciences, Mr. McKenna was President and CEO of Salix Pharmaceuticals, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bausch Health Companies. He joined Salix in March 2016 as the Senior Vice President and General Manager, responsible for the company's gastrointestinal franchise. During his tenure, Mr. McKenna successfully led the company through a series of key strategic acquisitions, launched several new products, and delivered strong operating performance, with revenue increasing from $1.2B to $2B.

Mark holds a BS in Marketing from Arizona State University, an MBA from Azusa Pacific University, and is a Fellow with the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.