Curidium develops test for schizophrenia/bipolar disorders

London, UK-based Curidium Medica, the personalized medicine company focused on bringing the right drug to the right patient, has developed a blood diagnostic test that can sub-classify patients with schizophrenia/bipolar disorder into one of four subgroups. This is the first time that a schizophrenia/bipolar disorder diagnostic blood test has been developed that classifies patients into different subgroups that are each associated with distinct underlying disease mechanisms and specific drug targets, the firm claims. The discovery, using Curidium's proprietary technology Homomatrix, of highly statistically-significantly different schizophrenic/bipolar disease patient subgroups was announced previously by the company.

Curidium's diagnostic test is based on the levels of expression of 28 genes in blood samples of schizophrenia/bipolar disorder patients. The test was designed using the Homomatrix technology and gene expression data was applied from blood samples of 115 patient and control donors. The test was subsequently assessed using blood samples from a different group of 32 schizophrenia/bipolar disorder patients in order to determine the test's specificity and sensitivity. The overall specificity or ability of the test to avoid incorrectly selecting a patient for a subgroup was 94%. The overall sensitivity, which determines the ability of the test to detect the subjects belonging to a subgroup, was 78%.