Imperial College London (UK)
Imperial College London (ICL) is a renowned university with a worldwide reputation for teaching and research across engineering, medicine, science and business. Consistently ranked within the top three universities in the UK and Europe, and the top ten worldwide, ICL attracts students and academics from across the world.
In 2021/2022, the Eurofins Foundation supported a research project on the “Next generation ultrasensitive biosensing”, led by Prof. Molly Stevens.
Stevens’ group is transforming disease detection by using catalytic nanomaterials to enhance the sensitivity of lateral flow tests – similar to home pregnancy tests.
These unique tests work by amplifying the signal of a disease analyte, making them up to 100 times more sensitive to detecting the disease. The result is clearly shown on the device after twenty minutes. The group is already developing devices to detect a range of health issues, including cancer, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, heart failure, COVID-19 and Ebola. They now plan to target cholera and pancreatic cancer. Key milestones going forward will include:
- Conducting large-scale clinical validation trials and seeking regulatory approval for the tests;
- Developing a user-friendly smartphone application to read the results of diagnostic tests and track the spread and treatment of diseases across communities;
- Developing capabilities in microfluidics to automate and miniaturise diagnostic devices.
Eurofins Foundation’ support contributed to the research activities targeted at the development of ultrasensitive, cheap, user-friendly and mobile-connected diagnostics amenable to low- and middle-income settings across a broad range of communicable and non-communicable diseases.
The research team is now working on the design, development, and validation of a versatile platform for rapid lateral flow testing able to detect biomarkers of SARS-CoV-2, ovarian cancer and cardiovascular disease. They are developing capabilities in microfluidics to automate and miniaturise diagnostic devices that will embed a user-friendly smartphone application opening up exciting technological advances in mHealth approaches (mobile health) such as AI-driven data classification, geo-tracking and personalised medicine.
This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal
