Partnership Includes Three Strategic Pillars that Target Inflammatory and Autoimmune Diseases with Traces to Infancy
- Infinant Health and the Connected World Without Disease Accelerator (CWWDA) announce today that they are partnering to create and enact a novel model of human health rooted in prevention at birth with the potential for impacts over a lifetime. Together, this partnership will demonstrate the transformative power of promoting health beginning at birth and is radically different from the prevailing model of "disease care" that dominates much of the world's healthcare systems today. This powerful partnership will undertake a global effort that will initially focus on promoting a healthy start at birth to reduce substantially, if not eliminate, a host of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases with either onset in or origins traceable to infancy.
Over the past half-century, societal modernization has been accompanied not only by a parallel rise in lifespan but also a life beset by chronic and, in most cases, inflammatory disease, including during childhood. The alliance between Infinant Health and the CWWDA will produce an accelerated vision of a world without chronic disease. Today, rates of autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases are steadily rising worldwide, including obesity, type 1 and 2 diabetes, food allergy, allergic skin disease – eczema, asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and neurologic impairment. This trend leads us to a world where we all live potentially longer but unhealthier lives. Science has demonstrated that immune system priming is a crucial determinant in establishing a healthy life-course trajectory, beginning at birth, and foundationally established during early childhood to create the health path for each human being. According to Kaile Zagger, CEO of Infinant Health, the alliance's goal is to "set children on a strong course by building immune systems primed for lifelong health, and CWWDA is the optimal partner to accelerate this path forward."
Ben Wiegand, CEO of CWWDA, continued "this partnership will combine the unique live bacterial, groundbreaking products of Infinant Health for the newborn and infant with the global vision and model the CWWDA alliance champions, to promote systems of 'health care,' not 'disease care.' "
The strategic partnership between Infinant Health and CWWDA will have three dedicated pillars.
First, through targeted clinical trials globally, the partnership will further demonstrate the transformative benefits of Infinant Health's live bacterial product for immune programming, B. infantis EVC001. Aided by leading technologies in metagenomics and bioinformatics, these studies will demonstrate the power to reshape the newborn gut microbiome with consequent effects on gut inflammation, immune system priming, and improved overall health complemented by disease avoidance.
Second, through prospectively defined health economic studies, the pair will partner with national healthcare systems worldwide to document significant short and long-term clinical efficacy and economic benefits through disease avoidance. There is compelling evidence that has demonstrated the considerable health-economic cost savings of preventing disease or getting children out of the NICU faster. The entities will work together to show this globally to benefit national healthcare systems and providers.
Third, the organizations will combine efforts to launch a campaign to raise awareness and develop a call to action around infant and early childhood health and the criticality of preventative care. Through united efforts, Infinant Health and CWWDA will work with key regulatory bodies, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to innovate new standards of care around the world for the treatment of newborn infants and children to produce a healthier next generation.
"The partnership between Infinant Health and CWWDA is uniquely positioned to both prove the concept and then move to scale with global partners the vision to achieve measurable disease prevention while securing a healthy start at birth for children everywhere as a right and privilege," said Karl Sylvester, Global Medical Advisor to Infinant Health. "Working together to achieve a healthier humanity globally is the uniting vision catalyzing this partnership."
Eric Luellen, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer of Infinant Health, emphasized "the 54 countries in the Commonwealth report a disease burden of approximately 400 million cases of non-communicable diseases (NCD) and chronic inflammation is the root of most of them. With the partnership between Infinant Health and the CWWDA, we have the historic opportunity to prevent most of them within a generation, transforming the future of human health, saving hundreds of millions of lives and billions of dollars."
ABOUT CWWDA
The Connected World Without Disease Accelerator's focus is to catalyze and accelerate a transformation of the dominant paradigm in health care from a "diagnose and treat" to one of "predict and pre-empt", leading to individuals living longer, healthier lives. The CWWDA's efforts will be focused across development of additional clinical validation of earlier therapeutic interventions, promoting the development of a learning health care system to enable the piloting of new technical and business model innovations, and attracting investment of capital, both financial and leading scientific, clinical, regulatory, and commercial talent into this field to help create this new health care system paradigm. These efforts will focus on both the developed and developing worlds.