Ovation.io, a leading human omics and clinical data company, and PrecisionLife, a precision medicine firm, has announced a groundbreaking collaboration aimed at developing drug-response biomarkers for glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1) therapies.
The initiative could pave the way for payor-facing tests to guide reimbursement policies, ensuring patients receive the therapies they are most likely to tolerate and benefit from.
The partnership leverages Ovation’s longitudinal multiomic data from 25,000 U.S. patients treated with GLP-1s, alongside PrecisionLife’s AI-driven combinatorial analytics platform, uniquely equipped to uncover disease drivers and pinpoint patients most likely to respond to specific treatments.
“This proof-of-concept project will enable a more sustainable approach to the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists and demonstrate our abilities to provide solutions in high value disease states where precision medicine and therapy selection address unmet needs,” said Curt Medeiros, CEO of Ovation.io.
“By combining Ovation's best-in-class longitudinal omics and clinical data generation capabilities with PrecisionLife's world-leading analytics, we aim to build the real-world evidence needed to guide payors toward smarter reimbursement policies that improve patient outcomes while controlling cost. Importantly, our biobank, which is representative of both sex and ethnicity in the US, is scaling in complex, chronic diseases at unprecedented speed.”
The initiative, the first of its kind, aims to reveal the biological mechanisms driving individual variation in response to GLP-1 therapies and identify biomarkers linked to safety, efficacy, and tolerability. The results are intended to help payors and providers optimize patient outcomes, reduce clinical waste, and sustain healthcare budgets amid rising demand. Biopharma companies could also use the findings to launch GLP-1 products in currently unreimbursed indications.
GLP-1 therapies are among the fastest-growing drug classes worldwide, projected to drive a $95 billion obesity market by 2030. In the U.S., annual prescriptions are expected to reach between 30 and 70 million by decade’s end. Yet high costs and uneven patient response pose challenges for payors, with large-scale prescribing threatening budget sustainability and crowding out other essential health services.
Steve Gardner, CEO of PrecisionLife, added: “This is our first collaboration with Ovation, giving us access to world-class multiomic and clinical data to expand our proven capability in identifying drug-response biomarkers beyond clinical trials and into real-world healthcare."
"GLP-1s present both a tremendous preventative health opportunity across multiple indications and a major challenge for health systems and payors. By understanding why some patients respond well and others do not, we can enable payors to make more informed, sustainable coverage decisions, help pharma bring new products to market, and ultimately deliver better value for patients, providers, and the industry.”
