Research
Autoimmune diseases are a large and diverse group of disorders affecting an increasing number of individuals throughout the world.
Early detection is crucial to mitigate these diseases that are often characterized by clinical symptoms in the early latent period. In addition, because of the chronic nature of autoimmune diseases, reliable tests monitoring disease progression and supporting therapies are needed.
In the process leading to the commercialization of in vitro diagnostic tests, Toscana Biomarkers is involved in finding serological markers and developing pre-competition tests.
In the research phase, Toscana Biomarkers is engaged in identifying, as markers of autoimmune diseases, autoantibodies circulating in the patient serum, which may be useful as detectors of the disease state. To this aim, Toscana Biomarkers uses peptide molecules that selectively recognize specific autoantibodies by immunoenzymatic assays. The selection of synthetic peptides (antigenic probes) is performed using a chemical reverse approach, a strategy successfully applied to develop diagnostic tests for autoimmune diseases by Toscana Biomarkers founders.
With regard to the pre-competitive development of diagnostic tests, Toscana Biomarkers is involved in adapting its proprietary systems of biomarkers identification to different technologies These include ELISA, widely used in the clinic, multiplex assays on beads or chips, point of care assays.
