User:MartinRSchiller/sandbox

Heligenics

Industry	Biotechnology, Pharmaceutical
Founded	2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada
Founder	Martin R. Schiller, PhD
Headquarters	Las Vegas , United States of America
Area served	worldwide
Website	https://www.heligenics.com/about

Heligenics Inc

Summary

Heligenics Inc. is an American biotechnology company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Heligenics is a biotechnology company focused on functional genomics research and services. The company has expertise in understanding the effects of genetic variations on gene function, disease development, and drug response. It offers comprehensive genomic solutions to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, as well as healthcare providers, to advance personalized medicine and precision therapeutics.

History

Founded in 2017 by Dr. Martin R. Schiller, Professor of Personalized Medicine at the University of Nevada, Heligenics Inc. was established to realize the promise of the functional genome and precision medicine. "Heli" is derived from “hǣlan” an Old English word that means “to heal” and “genics” which stands for genomics, which reflects the mission of Heligenics.

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  Heligenics Headquarters

Products and Services

Heligenics, produces all genetic variants for a given gene and tests how all variants functionally impact, en masse, live human cells. This is based on an experiment, Not artificial intelligence. The resulting data are called "Mutation effects on gene activity maps" (MEGA-Maps). MEGA-Maps have many application in the diagnostic and pharmaceutical industries, 4 of which are details below:

1. Drug Discovery and Development

There are over 1,000 of FDA-approved Biologics or experimental Biologics in current clinical development. MEGA-Maps have several applications in the drug development pipeline. For Biologics, this includes discovering lead Biologics or Biosimilars, improving existing Biologics, designing Clinical Trials, and creating Companion Diagnostics.

For Drug Discovery, combining multiple MEGA-Maps is the first implementation of high-content screening for biologics a previously well-established method for small molecule therapies. Heligenics identifies new drug leads and Biosimilar leads by mutagenizing an existing drug and testing ~10,000 mutants. These mutants are assayed against the pathological function associated with the existing gene and its target to identify new protein sequences for a new Biologic or that are equivalent to or outperform an existing reference drug.

For small molecule drugs, MEGA-Maps can be used for detailed Structure/Activity/Tolerance Relationships to evaluate lead compounds and derivatives, and characterizing compounds ready for trials. MEGA-Map from cells treated with and without drugs can identify mutations that are likely to have target derived drug resistance and affect efficacy. These variants are relevant to clinical trial design and post-market analyses.

2. Molecular Diagnostics.

In current clinical practice, genetic testing is used for diagnosis. This is enabled because routinely observed variants can be a biomarker of disease. However, quite often, when a variant is unknown, called a "Variant of Unknown Significance" (VUS), the variant is generally ignored in the diagnosis. Heligenics solves this problem with its MEGA-Maps, providing comprehensive clinical diagnostic solutions by test more than 10,000 variants in a coding and promoter regions of a gene.

3. Companion Diagnostics.

Companion Diagnostics are used to match a patient to a drug therapy or to select among drug therapies. These most often rely on single mutation genetic markers.

Experiments in the absence and presence of drugs are used to create MEGA-Maps. Comparison of these MEGA-Maps identifies all mutantion that produce target derived drug resistance. For example identify mutations in binding pockets that are likely to have resistance and affect efficacy. Many such mutations ocurr in the human popluation effect the efficacy of drugs.

4. Clinical Trial Design

MEGA-Maps are used pre-clinically to identify resistance mutations.Clinical trial participants can be segmented to exluded from trials but matching their genetic sequences to those in a MEGA-Map to reduce target-derived drug resistance. This will eliminate many non-responders before an expensive clinical trial. This "super-precision" genetic-based trial design increases efficacy and reduces project risk.