NEW YORK – Ovation.io on Thursday said it is building a large repository of clinical and genomic data from patients treated with GLP-1 receptor agonists.
The Portland, Maine-based firm said it expects to ready the whole-genome sequencing and longitudinal clinical dataset encompassing 8,500 patients by the end of 2025.
According to Ovation.io, "a global top 10 biopharmaceutical company," which it did not name, has licensed the dataset for three years to fuel its research into metabolic and other diseases that GLP-1 drugs might treat.
The deal is the latest sign that drugmakers are exploring precision medicine approaches to these blockbuster weight loss and diabetes drugs, which include Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy (semaglutide) and Eli Lilly's Zepbound and Mounjaro (tirzepatide), among others.
"The collaboration with a leading biopharmaceutical company and the addition of 8,500 patient records by the end of 2025 position this initiative as a cornerstone for advancing precision medicine in metabolic diseases," Ovation.io CEO Curt Medeiros said in a statement.
Ovation.io expects the WGS information in its dataset to provide insights into genetic variations associated with drug efficacy, metabolism, and safety. The longitudinal clinical records, meanwhile, will provide a window into the doses of GLP-1 drugs patients received, whether they discontinued the drugs, how much weight they lost, and how well the drugs controlled their blood glucose levels, among other outcomes.
The firm also said it is committed to building a diverse patient cohort, which in turn could make the findings generalizable across demographics and provide more accurate subpopulation analytics.