IT Management: Nanobiosym delivers a mobile diagnosis within one hour

mardi 21 janvier 2014

Nanobiosym delivers a mobile diagnosis within one hour

A lire sur: http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/nanobiosym-delivers-mobile-diagnosis-within-one-hour_426375

By L'Atelier - San Francisco December 26, 2013

An American company designed a portable diagnosis tool which could lead to the development of personalized medicine.

While AIDS testing costs on average $200 and takes two weeks to deliver a relevant diagnosis, an American laboratory relies on mobile technology to accelerate this process and reduce its cost by 2. Nanobiosym which recently received a $525,000 endowment sponsored by Nokia developed a process of diagnosis relying on a mobile tablet which can identify the markers of several viruses including AIDS or Escherichia Coli. This new opportunity could support the development of a personalized and transparent medicine.

A solution stemming from nano-biophysics

Based in Cambridge near Boston, Nanobiosym aims at developing medical devices for developing countries and defends a holistic approach to medical solutions. Her founder Anita Goel, a researcher affiliated to the university of Harvard defends a vision integrating simultaneously the advances of physics, biomedicine and nanotechnology to develop solutions which can be scaled quickly and with a strong social impact. A specific branch of the laboratory concentrates on the improvement of diagnostic methods, in particular for worldwide epidemics. The company leads at present a program in Rwanda, GENE-RADAR, experimenting the use of a mobile device of the size of an iPad which can analyze a blood or salivary sampling thanks to a chip. The device scans then in detail the fluids to extract from it precise genetic sequences revealing the track of a virus, the final diagnosis is available within one hour. ENE-RADAR thus allows to increase considerably the quality of testing made in rural and remoted regions where this virus is usually rampant. These results, thanks to the mobile feature of the device, could be automatically transmitted to research centers and other agenies located in other countries.

Expanding personalized medicine

In the long term this innovation could apply to other diseases, the laboratory is currently trying to build partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to finalize tests of inflammatory markers. The company has also several procedures of statutory gratitude, with the American FDA in particular to market the GENE-RADAR all around the world. Several other companies venture into the nanobiology field, InSilixa or Organic Silicon Devices Team which finalizes diagnosis for personalized medicine. According to Anita Goel the future of the medicine will not be standardized, it will take into account every possible markers available to design a fully unique treatment. For instance GENE-RADAR identifies potential allergies or intolerances which must be considered to choose the right procedure. This new technology could also facilitate the follow-up of epidemics, the data which can be storedh can be stored in a cloud platform. This new technology could also faciliate the follow-up of epidemics, using data directly stored in a cloud platform. The company is foreseeing several generations of tools of intelligent diagnosis, the following one should focus on smaller devices and eventually it should release wearable and edible solutions.