Helena Biosciences announced that it is commercialising a new blood test for chronic liver disease (CLD) in cooperation with the Ghent University branch of VIB – the life sciences research institute of Flanders, Belgium. The Glyco Liver Profile will provide healthcare professionals with a comprehensive tool to diagnose and monitor patients with hepatic inflammation, fibrosis and cirrhosis, and identify cirrhosis patients at low and high risk of developing HCC within the years following the test.

Glyco Liver Profile or GLP is a novel diagnostic test for chronic liver disease. It has the ability to diagnose and monitor CLD from liver inflammation to early and late stage fibrosis and early cirrhosis diagnosis. With its broad scope, this non–invasive test offers outstanding advantages over other tests on the market. Furthermore, GLP provides a powerful ability to predict a patient’s likelihood of developing HCC within the next 5 years. This is a huge additional benefit which no other non–invasive test can provide.

Glyco Liver Profile from Helena Biosciences will allow doctors to stratify patients into low and high–risk groups. Professor Hans Van Vlierberghe, hepatologist at UZ Gent explains: ‘The use of the test in patients with cirrhosis of the liver allows to create a customized follow–up schedule for each patient. On the basis of the risk measured, they could receive intensive or less intensive screening. This will lessen the cost and burden for patients at low risk and might improve early diagnosis for patients at high risk.’ Glyco Liver Profile was first conceived in 2004 by Nico Callewaert and Roland Contreras (VIB–UGent). They collaborated with Hans Van Vlierberghe and Joris Delanghe at UZ Gent for the clinical translation of the technology. The first results led to a publication of this ground–breaking research in the journal Nature Medicine (Noninvasive diagnosis of liver cirrhosis using DNA sequencer–based total serum protein glycomics, Callewaert et al., 2004). The test analyses the glycome of serum proteins, which are mainly produced by the liver. Over the last 13 years, the Callewaert lab developed and refined the test to offer a diagnostic test that can now easily be adopted into clinical laboratories on a routine clinical platform: Helena’s V8 Nexus Capillary Electrophoresis analyser. Ready for clinical introduction, Glyco Liver Profile is a mature in vitro diagnostic (IVD) with personalised medicine benefits. It offers an alternative to the currently available costly, invasive and often inaccurate options.