Aqtual to Present Data on Innovative Approach to Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapy Selection at CCR East 2024

HAYWARD, Calif., May 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Aqtual, Inc., a precision medicine company using its novel cell-free DNA platform to develop products for chronic diseases and oncology, today announced it is presenting two posters at the Congress of Clinical Rheumatology 2024 meeting in Destin, Florida May 9-12, 2024.

The first poster demonstrates proof-of-concept data for a novel blood-based therapy selection test the company is developing to predict treatment response in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The second poster highlights their PRIMA-102 study, Aqtual's prospective observational clinical trial, which is actively enrolling and was recently expanded to include more than 800 patients. This large multicenter study is supporting test development.

"There is a significant unmet need for a precision medicine approach to the treatment of RA," said Jeff Curtis, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and senior author on the proof-of-concept data poster. "Many patients try several drugs before finding an effective option. This trial-and-error approach can result in suboptimal treatment yielding persistent pain and long-term damage for RA patients, and may lead to enormous wasted expense to the healthcare system to pay for medications that don't work."

The proof-of-concept data underscores the potential of Aqtual's blood-based therapy selection test to accurately measure patient responses to specific treatments. This advanced classifier demonstrates promising capabilities in distinguishing between responders and non-responders to two leading drug classes?TNFa inhibitors and JAK inhibitors?thereby facilitating more precise and effective therapy choices.

"The data we are presenting at CCR East 2024 is an important step in the development of Aqtual's first therapy selection test, which will give rheumatologists a powerful tool for selecting therapy and helping their patients with RA achieve low disease activity," said Diana Abdueva, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Aqtual. "Our results confirm the classifier predicts responses and correlates closely with RA tissue pathobiology."

Posters are available on the Aqtual website:

• A Novel Blood-based Assay that Predicts Clinical Response to TNFa or JAKi in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis
  https://aqtual.com/media/files/CCR-East_2024_Corevitas_FINAL_RWuJhKi.pdf
• PRIMA-102: Predicting Biologic and Targeted Synthetic DMARDs Response in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Using a Blood Based Cell-free DNA Classifier
  https://aqtual.com/media/files/CCR-East_2024_PRIMA_102_TIP_FINAL.pdf 

About Aqtual, Inc.
Aqtual, Inc. is a precision medicine company developing products for chronic disease management and oncology utilizing a novel cell-free DNA-based platform. Aqtual's proprietary platform evaluates protein regulation, epigenetics, and transcriptomics solely using cell-free DNA fragments found in blood. The platform yields efficient and robust real-time analysis of disease and treatment while overcoming the limitations of previous cell-free DNA methodologies.

SOURCE Aqtual