Menlo Park, CA and San Diego, CA – LamdaGen Corporation and Arisan Therapeutics announced today they have been awarded a $2 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a high-sensitivity point-of-care (POC) dual diagnostic to detect both acute dengue and Zika viral infections in a single rapid test on LamdaGen’s LAuRA digital diagnostic platform.
The LAuRA platform enables robust diagnostic testing that is simple, compact and cost effective with no moving parts. LAuRA technology can be integrated into designs ranging from miniaturized handhelds to small desktops to lab-based throughput systems, each providing powerful on the spot performance of high sensitivity, rapid and quantitative diagnostic assays.
Global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades with about half of the world’s population now at risk. In fact, incidence of both dengue and Zika are escalating and prone to unpredictable outbreaks due to climate shifts and proliferation of carriers such as mosquitoes and ticks. Currently an estimated 390 million dengue infections occur around the world annually. Of these, approximately 500,000 cases develop into life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) or dengue shock syndrome (DSS), severe forms of the disease which result in over 25,000 deaths globally each year.
“Early diagnosis of patients with dengue in particular is critical for timely clinical intervention and disease control,” commented Randolph Storer, CEO of LamdaGen. “Dengue and Zika are closely related, and currently there is no FDA-approved multiplex POC test that can differentiate between the two during the acute phases of infection. Our collaborators at Arisan have identified highly specific antibodies for each test which we are integrating into the development on the LAuRA platform.”
In addition to enabling differentiation between the two viruses, this highly sensitive and quantitative POC assay will have the potential of acting as a prognostic for identifying patients at risk of developing severe forms of dengue including dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) and dengue shock syndrome (DSS) based on concentration of viral antigen found in blood. Early and rapid identification of these at-risk patients may help reduce mortality and morbidity by enabling immediate monitoring and medical care.
Speaking of the importance of this NIH grant, Ken McCormack, President of Arisan added, “We are very appreciative of NIH’s support and very excited to move forward in our collaboration with LamdaGen to develop these potentially life-saving solutions.”
Research supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44AI127055. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.