Ad Scientiam announces agreement with Johnson & Johnson Innovation to develop a digital assessment scale for Major Depressive Disorders

PARIS - Nov. 7, 2018 - PRLog -- Ad Scientiam announced today that it has entered into a collaboration with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV to develop a mobile medical application designed to predict anti-depressant treatment response in real life. This deal was facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) affects nearly 300 million people of all ages globally and is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Individuals with depression, including MDD, experience continuous suffering from a serious, biologically based disease which has a significant negative impact on all aspects of life, including quality of life and function.

Although currently available antidepressants (AD) are effective for many patients, about one third of patients do not respond to treatment and are considered to have treatment-resistant depression[ii].

In addition, current depression assessment scales are not specifically designed for an early identification of people with treatment-resistant depression. Thus, patients with inadequate response to treatment often have to wait for weeks or months before being diagnosed and properly treated.

Ad Scientiam will design and develop a mobile medical application, to detect, among an important array of signs and symptoms, early markers of response and non-response to an AD treatment.

The application consists of several modules, each collecting real-world patient data

• Self-report questionnaires, with visual analog scales on appetite, sleep, self-perception, etc.
• Interactive exercises to assess patient's mood, cognitive and speech functions
• Passive data collection of patient's physical and social activity.

"Ad Scientiam has built a strong expertise in the development of innovative mobile medical applications, based on real-world patient data. This new solution will provide regular, contextualized, multi-dimensional collection of patients' depressive symptoms and will allow us to identify, as early as Week 2, non-responders to an AD treatment and ultimately improve the clinician's decision-making process," explains Dr. Saad Zinaï, Ad Scientiam's Chief Medical Officer.

This assumption will be tested in patients with depression during a clinical study conducted in France, sponsored by Ad Scientiam, and coordinated by Pr. Bruno Millet (department of psychiatry, La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital).

Ad Scientiam will compare the global digital score and each of its dimension in patients showing adequate response to treatment to those showing no or insufficient response.

The mobile application acceptability in patients and investigators and its safety will also be measured.

"Since the creation of our company in 2013, we have benefited from the dynamism, innovation and proximity with research teams offered by La Pitie Salpetriere and the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM). We are very excited to embark on this new project with them. The support from Janssen is crucial to accelerate the project development and we are eager to start this collaboration," adds Liouma Tokitsu, Ad Scientiam's Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Ad Scientiam is preparing the IRB submission of the study protocol and the development of the mobile application. The recruitments are expected to start in the second quarter of 2019.

About Ad Scientiam
Ad Scientiam develops innovative digital solutions for patient monitoring in real life. Building on the growing possibilities offered by smartphones, Ad Scientiam creates new clinically-validated medical standards, in a collaborative ecosystem of patients, doctors and researchers.

MSCopilot® is Ad Scientiam's first solution CE marked as a Class 1 medical device, dedicated to the monitoring of patients with multiple sclerosis. Ad Scientiam works on several other solutions in Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, etc.

Ad Scientiam employs 25 people at its two sites in France (the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital and Station F campus) and in the United States (Seattle).

About the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM)
Founded in 2010 and located in the heart of the Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital, the first neurology center in France, the ICM represents a strong link between fundamental research and the clinical world. The Institute gathers more than 700 researchers and clinicians, 12 cutting-edge core facilities and 1000m² dedicated to startup incubation. Its aim is to produce ambitious research by combining scientific creativity and therapeutic purpose. Its innovative model brings together patients, doctors and researchers in a transversal approach of research that promotes collaborations and accelerates the discovery of medical innovations. Partnerships between the public and private sectors at the ICM have allowed to rapidly translate discoveries into therapeutic solutions for patients. Since 2017, the ICM is the first health partner of Station F, providing a competitive advantage in the field of connected health.

World Health Organization. Depression. Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs369/en/

[ii] Ionescu, Dawn, et al. "Pharmacological Approaches to the Challenge of Treatment Resistant Depression." Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2015; 17(2): 111–126. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4518696/

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