Tethys Bioscience Inc. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company U.S. Patent 7,723,050. The patent is directed to the company’s groundbreaking PreDx Diabetes Risk Score (DRS) test and relates to proprietary methods for assessing the risk of developing a diabetic condition. Notably, this patent was issued following an accelerated review procedure which enables innovators to receive a final decision within 12 months of application. The issued patent is a milestone for Tethys and has potential applicability to other Tethys products in development.

PreDx DRS is a simple-to-use, multimarker blood test that enables accurate identification of patients who have the highest risk of developing type 2 diabetes within five years. PreDx DRS facilitates identification of the 10-20% of individuals at the highest, near-term risk, for whom lifestyle or other intervention may be most beneficial.

“The rapid issuance of this first PreDx patent reflects the company’s commitment to an intellectual property portfolio that will support its rapid commercialization of novel technology to identify patients at risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other chronic cardiometabolic diseases,” said Mickey S. Urdea, PhD, Tethys chairman and chief executive officer. “The cost of treating all patients at risk for diabetes is not sustainable and threatens to break the U.S. healthcare system. We believe that the direct impact of PreDx DRS will be to mitigate the type 2 diabetes epidemic and lower healthcare costs by providing physicians with a powerful tool that will enable them to focus preemptive interventions on patients most at risk of developing the disease.”