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Covid-19 early rapid test given big boost in funding

A team of researchers at; Imperial College London are due to receive a modest grant of €500,000 from EIT health as a part of a rapid-response drive from the EU.

The team are partnered alongside other scientists from the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, the London School of Hygiene as well as Tropical Medicine and Abingdon Health, and are tasked with developing a rapid and ultrasensitive point-of-care diagnostic test for the virus.

The group will help create and test the project – dubbed “QuickZyme” – over the next few months. The test aims to detect ultra-low concentrations of the virus to help diagnose the infection far earlier in its life-cycle, with results available within the hour.

They hope that if carriers can be diagnosed earlier, they can be isolated and receive treatment before it has a chance to spread, helping to reduce the spread of the outbreak as well as dealing with the issue of symptomless carriers.

The initiative’s leader, Professor Molly Stephens, said: “SARS-CoV-2 is an unprecedented challenge on healthcare systems worldwide. Since last December, the virus has spread all around the world in a few months affecting all continents. The WHO is advocating the need to “test, test, test” to control the spread of the virus.

“We are developing a point of care device that builds on our expertise in ultrasensitive diagnostic technologies to enable rapid ultrasensitive early virus detection. Our team has direct collaborations with virologists, clinicians, contract manufacturers, the Imperial NHS Trust and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“We are aligned to the WHO-reassured guidelines for point-of-care testing of infectious diseases (Real-time connectivity, Ease of specimen collection, Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid & Robust, Equipment-free, Delivered).”

Professor Stephen’s team has extensive expertise in ultrasensitive biosensing and the integration of designer nanoparticles into rapid point of care tests, providing a needed edge to effectively innovate in identifying and treating the disease at the micro-level.

EIT Health has further announced funding of over €6 million to help fight the spread of the outbreak, with plans to dedicate this funding to 14 specially selected health innovation projects across Europe.

These 14 projects have been selected from a variety of areas in biotechnology, diagnostics, digital health and medical technology, with them being run by a further 36 partners. They will also work directly with healthcare services as part of a consortium to meet the demands of the industry and to reduce delay in the implementation of these services.

These projects will focus on immediate and impactful solutions that can be found to better help health companies’ deal with the pandemic by supplying them with better tools to navigate the disease with.

They aim to be complete by the end of 2020 and will focus on the following:

EIT hope the projects will show great potential in using the power of their network to develop cutting edge solutions to the outbreak.

EIT CEO Jan-Philipp Beck said: “We are proud of the fast and invaluable action taken by our employees, partners and wider network in response to the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 has highlighted our vulnerability but it also allows us the opportunity to come together and collaborate to find new ways of strengthening our health systems and create solutions to better equip the healthcare professionals working tirelessly to get us through this extremely difficult time.”

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