NIH Awards Grant to Enable Biosciences to Develop Lab Methods for At-Home Testing for Type 1 Diabetes Risk

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Nov. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Institute for Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant for $1,487,764 to Enable Biosciences to develop lab techniques to test samples collected at home for type 1 diabetes risk.

Over 1 million people in the United States have type 1 diabetes, with over 30,000 new cases each year, mostly in children. Up to half of these new cases coincide with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a potentially deadly condition. DKA may be prevented by screening for the presence of autoantibodies in blood. Additionally, new preventive therapies have shown the ability to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes by up to two years, but only in very early-stage individuals identified by asymptomatic screening.

Enable Biosciences is developing an at-home collection method to establish the likelihood of progressing to type 1 diabetes to prevent DKA and promote preventive therapies. Dried blood spot samples are easily collected in the convenience of an individual's home, promoting screening by improving testing compliance and reducing costs by making it easier to store and ship samples. This grant supports efforts to automate the extraction of dried blood spots for use with their award-winning autoimmune diabetes test.

This work builds upon previous research efforts at Enable and Stanford with support from the NIDDK and JDRF, the world's largest private funder of type 1 diabetes research.

"The ability to collect samples in the convenience of the home is a major step to ensure that all patients reap the benefits of breakthrough therapies. The NIDDK's support for this project will lower the barrier to universal screening," said Enable Biosciences' COO, Peter Robinson, PhD.

About Enable Biosciences: Enable Biosciences is a South San Francisco-based diagnostics company commercializing licensed technology from UC Berkeley. For more about Enable, visit www.enablebiosciences.com. For press inquiries, contact Peter Robinson at [email protected] or (415) 967-1460.

Research reported in this press release is supported by the NIDDK of the National Institutes of Health under award number NIH 1 R44 DK124009-01. Content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE Enable Biosciences Inc.