What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The world is facing enormous challenges from the spread of infectious diseases. According to World Health Organization (WHO), mosquito-borne Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) are among the most dangerous, in particular the ones transmitted by the female Aedes Aegypti mosquito, the primary vector for dengue (DENV), zika (ZIKV), chikungunya (CHIKV) and yellow fever (YFV) virus. Mosquito-borne diseases together kill more than 700,000 people every year, and Aedes mosquito presence is reported in more than 120 countries. Outbreaks have even been reported in the southern part of Europe and US. Dengue is the most common and dangerous of those mosquito borne viral infections. The infection causes flu-like illness and can occasionally develop into a life-threatening form as dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS). While dengue in most cases is not fatal, it still causes more than 20,000 deaths yearly.
Why is it important for society?
Dengue mostly prevails in tropical and subtropical areas, with 390 million cases/year, costing billions of dollars every year to the population and the healthcare ecosystems. Hospitals in dengue endemic areas can receive massive number of patients in high dengue season (up to few hundreds/day), but typically have availability of hospitalization beds for only a fraction of those (less than 20%). It is thus critical to be able to correctly distinguish patients who could potentially develop DHF/DSS, to be immediately hospitalized, from uncomplicated dengue forms, to be refereed home and monitored every three days. Each time a facility wrongly enrolls a patient in its dengue management program, it wastes the associated money and it reduces the availability of resources for real dengue cases. And each time a facility fails to enroll a dengue-positive case, it causes the patient a potentially long and debilitating recovery period (with higher risk of death), with the associated cost implications for the society. It is estimated that more than €200M are wasted every year only in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.
What are the overall objectives?
BluSense Diagnostics has developed an innovative nanotechnology-based point-of-care blood testing platform for detecting dengue fever. With a single drop of blood, we can within minutes and with very high accuracy, test whether patients have been infected with dengue fever. The technology will be a major step forward in the treatment of dengue in areas around the world, where dengue is a serious threat. Our first dengue diagnostic blood-test has been ready for sales since Q2 2018. The overall objective of the project is to enable BluSense to move from a single and narrow product (ViroTrack Dengue Acute) produced in low-volumes, to a full diagnostic dengue platform (Virotrack Dengue Combo) produced on a high-throughput automated line, and to facilitate the market entry with pre-sales activities in terms of e.g. local regulatory approval and training. With the Virotrack Dengue Combo platform we can not only diagnose if patients are infected with dengue, but also test the severity of the infection. Hence is becomes much easier to advice the right treatment. Beyond this project, the aim is to further develop the Virotrack Dengue Combo platform into a generic infectious disease platform.
