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
LUMABS BV has setup operations and it’s Assay Development Lab at the Hid/Sanquin, in Amsterdam in 2023. We are currently developing diverse assays in collaboration with other diagnostic manufacturers, while implementing a full complaint ISO 13485 laboratory/operations. LUMABS BV is developing its own range of immunoassays using its fast, quantitative bioluminescence immunoassay technology platform, RAPPID, with a focus on SEPSIS and other inflamation markers as well as Therapeutical Drug Monitoring (TDM) POC solutions for measuresing the blood concentration of drugs for immune mediated inflammatory disease and TDM for Antibiotic dosing through model-informed precision dosing (MIPD). LUMABS is looking for co-development opportunities with diagnostic companies that have already heterogeneous immunoassays using technology platforms such as ELISA/CLIA/TR-IFA, therefore available pairs of antibodies that can be used with our new bioluminescence-based sensors and coverted to homogeneous immunoassays with the same or higher sensitivity but always with TTR <30min.
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.