Clover Health Launches Subsidiary Clover Therapeutics and Partners with Genentech (Roche) to Advance Therapies for Age-Related Chronic Diseases

“Tech-focused” health insurer Clover Health is likely familiar to many; this January, the company secured a groundbreaking $500 million in financing. Recently, this “unicorn” company, which primarily provides health insurance for individuals aged 65 and older, announced the establishment of Clover Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical subsidiary aimed at leveraging insurance data to develop new therapies for age-related chronic diseases. Furthermore, the company has signed a research collaboration agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, with both parties focusing on genomic information associated with increased individual risk for eye diseases such as macular degeneration.

Clover Health, founded in 2012 and headquartered in San Francisco, USA, primarily provides Medicare Advantage plans to individuals aged 65 and older, leveraging data analytics technology for chronic disease management.

The company reduces costs and improves healthcare outcomes for seniors by collecting and analyzing user behavior data related to health and medical care, while offering a more affordable option for customers with private health insurance. This approach offers valuable insights for China’s commercial health insurance sector. To date, the startup, founded approximately seven years ago, has raised a total of $925 million in funding.

Clover Therapeutics will initially focus on combining clinical insights gathered by its parent company with new data sources, including digital biomarkers and genomics. “One of the major bottlenecks in drug development is our lack of understanding of the drivers of disease,” said Marcel van der Brug, the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. “Animal models and computational models are useful, but the best way to understand how human diseases work is to observe patients with the disease.”

Clover Health has developed machine learning models that leverage electronic health record (EHR) data, claims data, and sociodemographic information to help identify high-risk patients. The company believes that using these technologies—along with real-world genomic and quantitative molecular data—to establish patient subgroups facilitates the development of relevant therapeutic drugs.

Clover Health’s patients will constitute the primary study population for Clover Therapeutics, but the parent company stated that participants will not be limited to members of its insurance plans.

Mr. Zhang Cheng, head of Clover Therapeutics, stated, “Our objective is to establish a long-term patient research community, with dynamic patient cohorts and research touchpoints that operate independently of insurance operations. In addition to participating in clinical studies that may yield new therapies, Clover aims to gain a deeper understanding of patients’ diseases and specific health conditions. The newly established biopharmaceutical company seeks to address significant unmet needs for chronic progressive diseases within the Medicare population. By collaborating with our members to investigate the genetic factors underlying eye diseases, and leveraging Genentech’s pioneering history in drug discovery and development in this field, we aim to improve the quality of life for older adults.”

References:

[1] Clover Health Launches Clover Therapeutics, a New Research Subsidiary to Develop Treatment for Chronic Diseases Retrieved on July 11 2019 from https://www.cloverhealth.com/en/about-us/press/clover-health-launches-clover-therapeutics-and-genentech-partner

[2] Clover Health raises massive $500M round in exploding Medicare Advantage space Retrieved on July 11 2019 from https://medcitynews.com/2019/01/clover-health-raises-massive-500m-round-in-exploding-medicare-advantage-space/?rf=1

Original Title: Health Insurance Unicorn to Develop New Drugs! Reaches Cooperation Agreement with Roche