Leading companies and institutes in protein diagnostics and micro-nano-bio research, including Philips, imec, Hytest, PolyAn, Bremen University and Eindhoven University of Technology, have joined forces to investigate next generation technologies with the goal of enabling new highly sensitive blood tests for instant diagnostics near the patient. This could help to provide care-givers with relevant information for making on-the-spot decisions in a single patient interaction, with the possibility of streamlining healthcare processes and enabling new care models.
Blood tests provide pivotal medical information and are used in 70% of all medical diagnoses. In the vast majority of the cases today, the accuracy and reliability of a central laboratory within the hospital is required for conclusive diagnosis. Patients could greatly benefit from high-quality near-patient protein testing that is sufficiently swift, robust and convenient to be used in community care centers, at doctor’s offices and even by patients at home.
“Decentralized diagnostic testing could bring complex procedures out of the hospital towards the doctors’ office and home setting,” says Menno Prins, Research Fellow at Philips and part-time professor at Eindhoven University of Technology. “This could create new opportunities to bring healthcare closer to the point-of-need, e.g. for remotely monitoring the progress of patients, for personalization of their treatment, and for reducing the number of visits needed to the hospital”.
NextDx receives €3.6 million funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme, in addition to the initial investments already made by the individual consortium partners. Within three years, the project aims to generate a novel polymer device microtechnology, bio-molecular interfacing technologies and bio-physical discrimination technologies, and to integrate these into a prototype system with high-resolution protein biomarker detection as its goal.
The aim of NextDx is to:
- Demonstrate an integrated Micro-Nano-Bio System (MNBS) platform technology for extremely sensitive protein detection, within a few minutes, directly in blood plasma.
- Integrate the technologies into a prototype system for biomarker detection.
- Test a prototype bio-sensing system for the detection of a representative cardiac biomarker, namely for the rapid detection of cardiac troponin I.
NextDx has established an advisory board with stakeholders from various disciplines (patients, clinician, clinical chemist, health insurance specialist, government regulatory expert) in order to capture their insights for the development of a diagnostic platform that will suit the societal needs. The outcomes of the project will be shared with the general and scientific public by publications and conference contributions
Contact
Fridtjof Lechhart, COO/CFO PolyAn GmbH
PolyAn GmbH
Rudolf-Baschant Str. 2
13086 Berlin
Tel.: 030 91 20 78 0
Fax.: 030 91 20 78 11
E-mail: mail@poly-an.de
www.poly-an.de
About PolyAn
PolyAn is a nanotechnology company specialized in the modification of surfaces using Molecular Surface Engineering (MSE). Since 1996 PolyAn develops and manufactures consumables for applications that require high signal-to-noise ratios. PolyAn provides solutions for multiplex diagnostic and LifeScience research applications where decreasing sample volumes often aggravate unspecific interactions with the surface while low biomarker concentrations cause an insufficient test sensitivity.
Our customers include well-known diagnostic companies, providers of analytic systems for agricultural and environmental applications as well as research organizations for biomarker and pharmaceutical screening.