IQuity lands $150K NIH grant for autoimmune disease research

Nashville-based IQuity — which analyzes RNA data to develop tools that help physicians diagnose autoimmune diseases — has received a $150,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Small Business Innovation Research program.

The grant will help fund IQuity’s ongoing research into long non-coding RNAs and their usefulness in distinguishing fibromyalgia from rheumatic diseases including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, according to a release.

IQuity CEO Dr. Chase Spurlock and Chief Science Officer Dr. Thomas Aune bill themselves as among the first researchers to probe a potential link between gene expression in lncRNAs and the presence of autoimmune diseases.

“We took a ‘guilt by association’ approach,” Spurlock said in the release. “We were intrigued by the close proximity of lncRNAs to genes that had been studied for a long time and were very important.”

IQuity launched in early 2016, leveraging Vanderbilt University intellectual property to get operational.

Source – Nashville Post

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