Challenge
At present, some patients have to wait for several hours, or even weeks, to receive the results of their blood analysis diagnostic tests (ELISA tests). This is because many current diagnostic technologies have laboratory processes that consist of several tedious and time-consuming steps. The diagnostic results are crucial for physicians to determine the best treatment plan for their patients. Long waiting times hinder patient care, which can result in life-threatening consequences, especially for patients in critical condition in emergency or intensive care.
Opportunity
There are multiple applications were easy, fast and accurate biomolecule measurement would be beneficial. Examples of possible use cases are PoC infectious disease diagnostics and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) for antibodies. Tests to measure biomolecules are not currently used very often because of ELISA tests’ shortcomings and the lack of accuracy of existing PoC analysis methods.
Solution
Immunoassays are a diagnostic procedure used to detect and measure the quantity of a substance, such as antigens and antibodies. This novel testing procedure is so precise that it does not need to be reconfirmed at a hospital or external laboratory, ultimately saving time and money for the patient and our healthcare system. It can be done right next to the patient, avoiding long waiting times. The process is especially useful for emergency rooms and intensive care units as physicians can get real-time results, allowing them to make faster treatment decisions.
Status
This patented platform is in the proof of concept phase. The following steps are to explore the most promising applications, decide on the first application, develop a medical device for clinical validation and commercialise the end product. The research team from Eindhoven is looking into how this platform can help with the current COVID-19 crisis and future infectious outbreaks. This demonstrates the broad potential impact of this technology within the diagnostics and monitoring field.
For more information check Lumabs.com
Meet the team
Maarten Merkx
Inventor
Roland Zegger
Venture Partner
Roland joined NLC in March 2015. He is a trained pharmacist, has worked in several pharmaceutical companies, and has broad experience in marketing and sales functions as well as general management. As Venture Partner, Roland focuses on building innovative companies and strengthening NLC’s abilities to bring innovations to healthcare.