Mindera Health Collaborates with the University of Pennsylvania for Academic Research Exploring Cutaneous Lupus Erythematosus Treatment

The research pairs Mindera Health’s Dermal Biomarker Patch™ and Subtilitas Platform with Penn’s translational immunology expertise to decode quinacrine’s mechanism of action in treatment-resistant cutaneous lupus.

Vista, CA, Sept. 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mindera Health™, a leader in precision medicine for dermatological conditions, today announced a research collaboration with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania funded by the Lupus Research Alliance, to investigate the mechanism of action of quinacrine in cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE). The partnership is the first academic collaboration established utilizing Subtilitas, the precision translational medicine platform Mindera Health launched earlier this year.

CLE is a chronic autoimmune skin disease that causes disfiguring scarring and pigment changes, profoundly affecting patients’ quality of life. Despite this burden, no CLE-specific therapy has been approved by the FDA in more than 60 years. Roughly half of CLE patients fail to respond to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the standard first-line treatment, and are instead offered quinacrine (QC) as a second-line option. QC’s mechanism of action has remained poorly understood, making it difficult to predict which patients will benefit before committing to a course of therapy that can take two months or longer to show results.

Victoria P. Werth, MD, Professor of Dermatology and Rheumatology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Principal Investigator of the study, aims to close that gap. Her lab’s published work identified inflammatory mediators that QC suppresses but HCQ does not. Building on evidence that toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) drives inflammatory signaling in myeloid dendritic cells, the research team’s central hypothesis is that QC works in HCQ-nonresponsive patients by antagonizing TLR8 in these cells, specifically shutting down the inflammatory cascade.

In the study, which Penn will perform in collaboration with Ben Chong, MD at UT Southwestern, the Subtilitas platform will be deployed in a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial in which HCQ-nonresponsive patients receive HCQ plus QC or HCQ plus placebo for 12 weeks, followed by 12 weeks of open-label HCQ+QC treatment for both arms. Throughout the trial, the team will serially analyze blood and skin samples to characterize the immune response and identify biomarkers that distinguish future QC responders from nonresponders.

Mindera Health’s proprietary Dermal Biomarker Patch™ is central to that biomarker discovery effort. The FDA-registered, minimally invasive device captures thousands of molecular signals directly from the skin without a biopsy, enabling repeated, longitudinal sampling across the trial’s 24 weeks. By pairing this non-invasive tissue collection with next-generation sequencing and machine learning, the collaboration aims to flag likely QC responders before treatment begins – turning today’s two-month trial-and-error approach into an upfront, data-driven decision and helping ensure patients are matched to therapies that will actually work for them.

“Subtilitas was built to give the translational research community – whether that’s a biopharma partner or an academic investigator like Dr. Werth – direct access to objective, molecular-level insight into skin disease,” said Tobin J. Dickerson, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Mindera Health. “This is our first academic collaboration under the platform, and cutaneous lupus is an ideal proving ground: patients often wait months to learn whether a therapy is working. Our Dermal Biomarker Patch gives Dr. Werth’s team a non-invasive way to watch that biology unfold and find the signals that predict response early.”

“Quinacrine has helped patients for decades, but we’ve never had a clear picture of how it works or who it will help,” said Werth. “By combining our immunologic work on TLR8 and the STING pathway with Mindera Health’s dermal patch technology, we can serially sample skin biology throughout the trial without repeated biopsies. We expect that kind of data density may let us move cutaneous lupus patients onto the right therapy faster.”

Findings from the collaboration are expected to inform biomarker-guided treatment selection for CLE patients and may point to new therapeutic targets beyond quinacrine. Mindera Health and Dr. Werth’s team anticipate sharing initial results as the trial progresses.

About Mindera Health

Mindera Health is a private San Diego-area company developing and commercializing next-generation medical technology to enable a new era of skin analytics at the molecular level. Using a proprietary dermal biomarker patch, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) and Machine Learning, Mindera Health technology generates clinically validated data to reduce healthcare system costs and improve patient outcomes. Mindera Health is a CLIA, CAP, and NY Department of Health accredited Laboratory and has received ISO 13485:2016 certification. Find out more at minderahealth.com.

About Subtilitas

Subtilitas is a precision translational medicine platform launched by Mindera Health and Mountaineer Biosciences that integrates non-invasive skin sampling, advanced molecular profiling, and artificial intelligence/machine learning analysis to enable high-resolution characterization of skin and immune diseases. Subtilitas is available for partnership with biopharmaceutical companies, academic investigators, and clinical research organizations seeking to enhance translational insight, improve trial efficiency, and advance personalized therapies for skin and immune diseases. Find out more at subtilitas.ai.

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• Mindera Health and Subtilitas Collaborate with UPenn

Tobin J. Dickerson, Ph.D.
Mindera Health
(858) 810-6070
tobin.dickerson@minderahealth.com