EMD Serono Partners With ACP For MS Clinical Research Study

Merck subsidiary EMD Serono announced that it has partnered with nonprofit organization Accelerated Cure Project (ACP) for Multiple Sclerosis to help launch the OPT-UP clinical research study.

The U.S. based, multicenter OPT-UP (Optimizing Treatment — Understanding Progression) study will involve 2,500 patients with multiple sclerosis. Its goal is to accumulate an evidence base of factors affecting treatment outcomes in the disease. The findings will be used to guide treatment choices and other interventions in treating MS. These will be instrumental as well in producing tools and drugs aimed at slowing, halting, or reversing MS progression.

“Although progress has been made in making more therapies available to people living with MS, we still make a lot of treatment decisions based on trial and error. The OPT-UP study objective is to provide data and insights to better match people living with MS with the treatments,” said R. Philip Kinkel, Chair of the OPT-UP Steering Committee and director of the MS Program at the University of California San Diego.

The collaborators will enroll patients at up to 20 MS clinics across the U.S. They will be followed anywhere from 2 to 5 years. Study researchers will collect data on therapy outcomes and biological samples. Patient reported outcomes will also be captured online regularly. These, together with imaging data analyzed by ACP investigators, will be made available to researchers in order to speed up understanding of the disease.

Robert McBurney, president and CEO of ACP for MS, remarked, “We are thrilled that EMD Serono… has chosen to take a lead founding sponsor role, providing the support needed to implement this important study.”

Dr. Thorsten Eickenhorst, SVP and CMO of EMD Serono, said, “Our collaboration with the Accelerated Cure Project on the OPT-UP clinical research study offers us an extraordinary opportunity to combine complementary expertise and resources to improve patient outcomes.”

In a similar move earlier this month, the company announced another research partnership, this time with the Massachusetts General Hospital, to advance understanding of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Lupus Nephritis pathogenesis.