Project description
A biochemical test for traumatic brain injury diagnosis
Doctors in an emergency room reach diagnosis of a suspected traumatic brain injury (TBI) using a combination of CT and MRI scans as well as a neurological evaluation. The EU-funded Medicortex project has developed an alternative TBI diagnostic method which is fast and easy to use and can be performed at the point of care, offering immediate results. The test is based on TBI-specific biomarkers that can be detected in saliva and urine samples, and it has great potential to improve the clinical outcome of millions of people with TBI worldwide.
Objective
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is the leading cause of central nervous system impairment, over traumatic spinal cord injury. Mild and moderate TBI cases represent more than 90% of TBI injuries but are unfortunately the most difficult to accurately diagnose. Currently, standard TBI diagnostic tools are based on CT scans, MRI scans or cognitive evaluations which are not always sufficient accurate to correctly diagnose mild and moderate cases, putting the patient at risks (long-term consequences of untreated TBI include headache, dizziness, irritability, anxiety and depression).
Medicortex is an innovative point of care test based on novel glycan-based biomarkers. The Medicortex diagnostic kit is a cost-efficient, quick and reliable test based on specific biomarkers for the identification of TBI in both saliva and urine samples. We have protected the innovation with several patents.
Many biomarkers have been suggested for TBI but none has resulted in an approved test. We have already proven that our biomarker is strongly correlated with TBI, allowing us to address a TBI point of care (POC) diagnostics market that will exceed €2 billion annually.
We will sell the Medicortex TBI tests and envision a price to distributors of €25. We expect distributors to charge €50 to healthcare providers and make a margin of 50%. This will reduce the TBI diagnostics cost by a factor of 10-25x for healthcare systems as a single test can be charged to the patient for less than €100 instead of €1,000 for a CT scan or €2,500 for an MRI scan. Two distributors have confirmed they interest in a letter.
Our Founder Dr. Harel has many years of experience in the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Our Medical Director Dr. Mårten Kvist is active in academia and our Head of R&D Dr. Lasse Välimaa has a track record in R&D of bioanalytical methods and medical diagnostics.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
20520 TURKU
Finland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.