• The combination of real-life data sets in rare diseases with innovative big data/artificial intelligence/novel scientific computational knowledge will transform biomedical research, product development, and therapy.
• Real-life data and Innovative Bioinformatic Algorithms (RIBA project) will enable the creation of a powerful environment to accelerate, de-risk, and improve the development of new orphan drugs for many diseases and disease areas.
• RIBA develops and offers data-/computing-driven solutions to guide the highest and most precise innovation for a new way of drug development in a modern biopharmaceutical environment.
• The collaboration will start with Epilepsy as the first indication

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and ROSTOCK, Germany and BERLIN and HEIDELBERG, Germany, July 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Centogene N.V. (Nasdaq: CNTG), a commercial-stage company focused on rare diseases that transforms real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies, and Molecular Health, a leading company in the field of data and computing science for precision medicine, announced today that they will collaborate exclusively to initiate the Real-life data and Innovative Bioinformatic Algorithms (RIBA) project – starting with Epilepsy as the first indication. RIBA aims to foster a unique novel precision medicine environment to accelerate, de-risk, and improve the development of new orphan drugs based on the combination of large real-life data sets in rare disease with innovative big data, innovative artificial intelligence, as well as computational algorithms and expertise. Both companies are convinced that this strategy of merging real-life data with a global curated biomedical knowledge, as well as applying artificial intelligence and scientific computing will radically change and transform biomedical research, product development, and therapy. Additionally, it will offer data-/computing-driven solutions to guide the highest and most precise innovation for the new way of drug development in a modern biopharmaceutical environment.

Prof. Arndt Rolfs, CENTOGENE Chief Executive Officer, stated, “We are excited about this collaboration. Both companies have been analyzing the potential interaction for an extended period of time and are deeply convinced that now is the right time to start an exclusive cooperation focusing on rare genetic diseases. The complementary expertise and knowledge of both companies will allow us to reduce the time to develop a new orphan drug by combining of real-life data and innovative computational biomedical expertise. CentoMD®, one of the world’s largest rare disease data repositories, allows us to take advantage of the high quality of the real-life data from a global cohort of more than 500,000 consented patients. The extraordinary expertise of Molecular Health will not only speed up the identification of new targets in rare disease, but also allow us to de-risk and accelerate the development of new orphan drugs.”

“By starting this exciting collaboration between our companies, we are initiating and building a unique novel model of personalized healthcare. The combination of both companies’ data and expertise will ultimately transform modern drug development and therapy. It will allow for the development of better drugs with higher specificity and safety, lower attrition rates in clinical studies, and a faster time to market to help patients with severe diseases worldwide through novel therapies,” said Dr. Friedrich von Bohlen, Molecular Health Chief Executive Officer. “Together with CENTOGENE, Molecular Health´s deep scientific, medical, and computational expertise will lay the fundament for personalized healthcare options in rare diseases to fulfill the promise of precision medicine.”

The companies have agreed to start with Epilepsy as the first indication. Financial details were not disclosed.

About CENTOGENE

CENTOGENE engages in diagnosis and research around rare diseases transforming real-world clinical and genetic data into actionable information for patients, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies. Our goal is to bring rationality to treatment decisions and to accelerate the development of new orphan drugs by using our extensive rare disease knowledge, including epidemiological and clinical data, as well as innovative biomarkers. CENTOGENE has developed a global proprietary rare disease platform based on our real-world data repository with approximately 3.0 billion weighted data points from over 530,000 patients representing over 120 different countries as of March 31, 2020.

The Company’s platform includes epidemiologic, phenotypic, and genetic data that reflects a global population, and also a biobank of these patients’ blood samples. CENTOGENE believes this represents the only platform that comprehensively analyzes multi-level data to improve the understanding of rare hereditary diseases, which can aid in the identification of patients and improve our pharmaceutical partners’ ability to bring orphan drugs to the market. As of March 31, 2020, the Company collaborated with 39 pharmaceutical partners covering over 45 different rare diseases.

About Molecular Health

Molecular Health is a data science-focused artificial intelligence computing company enabling and improving decision making in precision medicine for healthcare organizations. The company offerings are based on the capture, curation, integration, and analysis of large biomedical and drug data sets and combining them with novel artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technologies.

For more than a decade, the company has been developing Dataome, a unique high-quality curated, interoperable system that combines clinico-molecular and drug data with proprietary analytical processes. Dataome – stand alone or in combination with customer data – enables the unlocking of actionable intelligence at the molecular level to a) improve diagnosis and therapy decisions by physicians and patients; b) enrich and support better drug discovery, drug development, trial optimization, drug differentiation and positioning for pharma and healthcare organizations; and c) more accurately predict the likelihood of success and likelihood of approval of drug candidates in clinical development for better trial prioritization and resource and investment allocation. For more information, visit www.molecularhealth.com.

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This press release contains statements that constitute “forward looking statements” as that term is defined in the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements that express the Company’s opinions, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions or projections regarding future events or future results, in contrast with statements that reflect historical facts. Examples include discussion of our strategies, financing plans, growth opportunities and market growth. In some cases, you can identify such forward-looking statements by terminology such as “anticipate,” “intend,” “believe,” “estimate,” “plan,” “seek,” “project” or “expect,” “may,” “will,” “would,” “could” or “should,” the negative of these terms or similar expressions. Forward looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to the Company. However, these forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of our performance, and you should not place undue reliance on such statements.  Forward-looking statements are subject to many risks, uncertainties and other variable circumstances, such as negative worldwide economic conditions and ongoing instability and volatility in the worldwide financial markets, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations, possible changes in current and proposed legislation, regulations and governmental policies, pressures from increasing competition and consolidation in our industry, the expense and uncertainty of regulatory approval, including from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, our reliance on third parties and collaboration partners, including our ability to manage growth and enter into new client relationships, our dependency on the rare disease industry, our ability to manage international expansion, our reliance on key personnel, our reliance on intellectual property protection, fluctuations of our operating results due to the effect of exchange rates or other factors. Such risks and uncertainties may cause the statements to be inaccurate and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Many of these risks are outside of the Company’s control and could cause its actual results to differ materially from those it thought would occur. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made only as of the date hereof. The Company does not undertake, and specifically declines, any obligation to update any such statements or to publicly announce the results of any revisions to any such statements to reflect future events or developments, except as required by law.

For further information, please refer to the Risk Factors section in our Annual Report for the year ended December 31, 2019 on Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 23, 2020 and other current reports and documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). You may get these documents by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.