Rheomuco aims to fight chronic lung diseases like COPD, the 3rd cause of death worldwide, as well as bronchiectasis and severe asthma. It also targets rare diseases like Cystic Fibrosis (CF) and Prima-ry Cilia Dyskinesia. Applications can be developed for infectious diseases: tuberculosis and even SRAS-viruses.
Rheomuco is a medical device which delivers a test within 10 minutes, with quantitative, reactive and reproducible biomarkers. With this decision support tool, healthcare professional (HCP) can:
• Predict exacerbations, anticipate crises to reduce hospitalizations and avoid emergency treat-ment,
• Evaluate and adapt treatments thanks to personalized monitoring when taking corticosteroids, antibiotics and mucolytics,
• Classify lung damage, in particular the risks of bronchial obstructions.
In Europe, we lead 2 Phase II clinical trials to valid medical benefits of the biophysical markers in COPD and CF. The precision medicine using companion tests of current drugs (ICS and azithromycin) aims to avoid costly hospitalisations and an irreversible loss of respiratory capacity for the patients.
The biophysical markers represent the physical properties of lung mucus: viscosity, elasticity and plasticity. Therefore they evaluate mucus propensity to clog and obstruct the pulmonary tract. For human, mucus samples come from sputum: a lung secretion from the lower part of the airways. This sample need to be homogenized with a standard procedure patented by Rheonova. The ob-jective of the Rheocare is to prepare the integration of the homogenizer to automate the sample preparation. This step is central because this manual procedure can be a source of errors by the addition of saliva in the mix. We develop a microfluidic channel to manage the homogenisation and integrate with the associated software this building block into the existing Rheomuco. We refine our commercialisation plan for medical use of the device by interviewing 16 key opinion leaders in Europe, China and the USA. We finally fine-tune our Intellectual Property strategy by focusing on the biomarkers protection.
