Project description
Faster diagnosis of Candida
Every year, 3.5 million Europeans contract an infection while in hospital and 2.5 million die or are seriously debilitated as a result. Candida is the fourth most common cause of bloodstream infection that can develop while in hospital. If not treated immediately, it can lead to dissemination of the disease and cause severe infections in internal organs. A fast diagnosis is vital but existing blood culture methods are not fast enough. The EU-funded CandidaHunter project proposes an advanced blood culture method for rapid Candidiasis detection based on nanotechnology. The new method offers increased detection sensitivity in comparison to existing blood cultures and provides a diagnosis within 24 hours. The project intends to pave the way for commercialisation.
Objective
CandidaHunter is the latest diagnostic innovation of Matriks Biotek®, owing to its years of expertise on medical biotechnology. The company has already developed and commercialized many diagnostic kits distributed over 37 countries around the world. This time Matriks Biotek targets Candidiasis, a fungal infection affecting roughly a million of people each year, making it the 4th leading cause of hospital infections. The mortality rate of 40% associated with the disease shows there is still much to improve in antifungal therapy.
The Challenge
The most crucial need in Candidiasis treatment is fast diagnosis. Blood culture is the gold standard assay for Candidiasis diagnosis but can only detect 50% of the cases within 3 to 5 days. Delayed treatment and undiagnosed cases lead to dissemination of the disease and cause severe infections in internal organs.
Our Solution
Matriks Biotek introduces CandidaHunter as a fast blood culture medium to detect Candidiasis in bloodstream. Enhancing the golden standard with nanotechnology, CandidaHunter offers an increased detection sensitivity of 80% and a much shorter diagnosis period of 24 hours.
The Opportunity
Factors like high incidence of infections, rising demand for fast diagnostic tests, aging population as well as advancements in medical technology always make newer and better solutions highly sought after. Considering its unique features, Matriks Biotek believes CandidaHunter will easily make a name for itself all around the world. Culture based technologies have the largest share in the diagnostic market due to the extensive usage of conventional blood culture media. By commercializing it on global scale, Matriks Biotek aims to benefit from CandidaHunter with its potential leverage effects and apply its capabilities to a new market.
Matriks Biotek is an R&D intensive SME established in 2002 with a main focus on therapeutic drug monitoring and immunogenicity detection.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
06830 GOLBASI ANKARA
Türkiye
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.