Precision Diabetes and Austria-based DirectSens GmbH are teaming up to bring MetMark to the U.S. market. This strategic commercialization partnership will launch the AHB-based clinical test using DirectSens's innovative XpressGT enzymatic assay technology.

The partnership comes as new clinical research strengthens the evidence for AHB as an early marker of metabolic dysfunction and future type 2 diabetes risk.

A 10-year prospective study published in 2026 followed 1,349 participants and revealed that elevated baseline AHB independently predicts the onset of type 2 diabetes, even after accounting for traditional clinical risk factors.

"This is what makes AHB so compelling," said Eric A. Button, Founder and CEO of Precision Diabetes. "AHB may allow us to identify increased metabolic risk years before diabetes becomes clinically apparent. The opportunity is not simply to diagnose disease earlier, but potentially to identify people while there is still time to intervene and change the trajectory."

A second 2026 study, published in Diabetes Care, evaluated AHB using the DirectSens XpressGT enzymatic assay and demonstrated its ability to identify postprandial dysglycemia among individuals whose fasting glucose and HbA1c remained within normal ranges.

Together, the studies suggest that AHB may provide clinically useful metabolic information beyond conventional glucose-based testing.

DirectSens developed XpressGT, a quantitative enzymatic assay that measures AHB in serum or plasma and can be implemented on standard high-throughput clinical chemistry analyzers, helping move AHB testing from specialized mass spectrometry into routine laboratory workflows.

"Our goal with XpressGT was to make measurement of this important metabolite practical and accessible to routine clinical laboratories," said Dr. Christoph Sygmund, Co-Founder & CEO of DirectSens. "Precision Diabetes brings deep experience in diabetes diagnostics and commercialization, together with an established scientific and intellectual property position in AHB, making this an ideal partnership for expanding the clinical application of AHB in the United States."

Under the agreement, Precision Diabetes holds exclusive U.S. rights to market, sell and distribute XpressGT® for specified diabetes and prediabetes LDT applications and plans to commercialize the clinical test under its MetMark brand. DirectSens will provide the assay technology, product documentation and technical onboarding, while Precision Diabetes will lead U.S. marketing, sales, laboratory implementation and reimbursement activities.

"MetMark fits directly with our mission at Precision Diabetes," Button added. "We have been working with AHB for years. Combining that experience and our intellectual property with DirectSens's practical enzymatic technology creates an opportunity to bring an important metabolic biomarker into routine clinical use."