(Sharecast News) - E-Therapeutics announced a strategic collaboration with Arcturis Data on Thursday - a prominent UK data company known for its high-quality, real-world data platform.

The AIM-traded firm said the partnership would leverage Arcturis' real-world evidence (RWE) platform, which comprises clinically rich real-world data and analytical expertise based on anonymised patient information.

It said the data would be integrated with e-Therapeutics' computational biology platform HepNet, with a particular focus on advancing therapies for patients dealing with metabolic dysfunction and associated conditions like nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

The collaboration would involve e-Therapeutics harnessing HepNet, its proprietary suite of AI-driven algorithms and hepatocyte-centric data sources to analyse Arcturis' RWE outputs.

It explained that the goal was to drive the discovery and development of innovative RNA interference (RNAi) medicines to address NASH and related disorders.

As part of the agreement, e-Therapeutics would gain exclusive rights to nominate novel gene targets that emerge from the collaboration.

The nominated gene targets would be instrumental in the development of genetic medicines using e-Therapeutics' GalOmic RNAi platform, the board said.

"This is an important strategic collaboration which enables us to access real-world insights generated from patient data including electronic health records, imaging and biomarker data, and integrate these insights into HepNet," said chief executive officer Ali Mortazavi.

"This effort complements ongoing work at e-therapeutics in metabolic diseases, and we believe that the collaboration will unveil unique insights into the biological mechanisms driving NASH that we can target to deliver effective RNAi medicines to patients."

At 1418 GMT, shares in e-Therapeutics were up 7.89% at 9.98p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.