One third of the population suffers from at least one skin condition. Intensified research allowed for better understanding of molecular mechanisms of skin diseases resulting in a broad palette of drugs for skin tumor and inflammation. Despite this success story, a breakthrough is still pending due to missing modern diagnostic tools. Conventional diagnostics based on clinical view and histomorphology is subjective and imprecise, leading to up to 50 % of misdiagnosed cases. Misdiagnosed patients receive insufficient or even harmful therapy, are unnecessarily hospitalized, suffer from stigmatization and disability, and cause costs for the healthcare systems. Therefore, conventional diagnostics need to be urgently complemented by molecular diagnostics. During development of PsorX test, DERMAGNOSTIX realized that complex molecular tests could only be implemented in a fully
automated setting due to low technical validity and vast investment of time and resources when performed manually.
Therefore, DERMAGNOSTIX develops within the scope of the project a revolutionary solution for skin diagnostics – a fully automated cost-efficient platform for molecular diagnostics of skin diseases. It consists of two elements: i) LabDisk – a microchannel cartridge for sample loading and microfluidic processing including all reagents necessary for the test. ii) LabDisk-Analyzer – an automated portable unit performing entire protocol from sample preparation and processing to signal detection and result.
With the Dermagnostix solution, one only needs to put a sample - tissue section embedded in paraffin, freshly taken biopsy or tapestrip – into the disk, insert the Labdisk into the analyzer and push the analyzer’s start button. Objective results are delivered within 45-90 min and testing can be run anywhere and at any time. Our easy-to-handle diagnostic device allows simultaneous detection of 40 and more different molecular targets.
