Ian Bolland spoke to Jonathan O’Halloran, CEO of QuantuMDx about the latest assay developed by the company as it aims to help battle flu season in the UK.
Hot on the heels of winning Med-Tech Innovation’s special recognition award for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic by developing Q-POC, QuantuMDx has been developing a new assay to help combat a spike in seasonal respiratory diseases.
The diagnostics company has developed a new assay that can detect up to four different respiratory diseases, flu A, flu B, all know sequences of COVID-19 and RSV.
Simon Murrell
After periods of lockdowns and other lesser restrictions in the UK, there’s the worry of hospitals not just being overwhelmed by COVID admissions, but of flu too.
Jonathan O’Halloran explains the difficulty distinguishing different respiratory diseases from one another and hopes that the new development can help clinicians on the front-line.
He said: “Q-POC, our rapid PCR testing system, is going to have a long menu of different assays coming through, some exciting ones as well in a space that we call syndromic testing.
“You're not necessarily always going to have a doctor there to do the imperial diagnosis to decide what you want to test for.
“You need to test for everything that causes a certain symptom, hence a syndromic panel. So, if someone rocks up to a pharmacy or a doctor's office with something like diarrhoea, then a test can be run for everything that causes diarrhoea. Or a fever test for everything that causes fever, respiratory test for everything that causes respiratory distress and so on. These syndromic panels are the true future of Point of Need testing.
“The Q-POC and its assays are so easy to use. You just do a swab, put it in the buffer, trip up down five times, and then put it in the device.”
Ease of use is key to this Point of Need diagnostic - to help establish the condition and to isolate any patients if required.
“You want to use something that's simple because people in A&E, they're busy as hell and, they've only got time to just collect a sample, press it (the device), go and forget about it. And then when Q-POC starts flashing or stopped (in approximately 30 minutes), then they know it's ready, they have their results and then they can figure out how best to treat that patient.
“Q-POC is a game changing from that perspective.”
The potential isn’t just for the diagnosis and aiding treatment of respiratory diseases as O’Halloran says - this form of testing can be replicated with other conditions, such as sexually transmitted infections. Having such a device on a campus that can rapidly diagnose a sensitive condition when someone might shy away from a consultation is something that O’Halloran feels is a useful asset.
“If they've got a certain symptom, people don't necessarily want to talk about it, but they want to know what it is, because the treatment is going to be different and often needed quickly. So, a healthcare professional can swab, put it in the Q-POC, run the test and get the result in approximately 30 minutes.”
“The engineering is exactly the same as it was for the more COVID-focussed features of the product – the only thing that needed to be altered were the primers and probes.”
This is part of what O’Halloran describes as a well-developed product pipeline at the company with partnerships being forged and likely to be announced in the very near future. Though Q-POC is currently focused on respiratory conditions for now, O’Halloran sees the product becoming a jack of all trades – with the Point of Need element a crucial aspect, to provide an instant diagnosis and could be a key tool in combatting drug resistance.
As a result, it can save the patient time and reduce primary care costs.
“We’d be reducing the cost of drugs because we can treat the patient with the right drug at the right time, first time. The convenience of it all means that that people don't have to worry about having a disease for prolonged time, which will also cost more.”
