A small chip called the QbQ can detect tiny amounts of disease-related proteins in a drop of blood in under 15 minutes, at a cost comparable to a pregnancy test. Current blood tests for early signs of dementia, cardiovascular disease, or cancer often require expensive lab equipment and hours or days for results. This makes routine screening impractical. The QbQ chip aims to change that by combining extreme sensitivity—able to spot biomarkers at very low levels—with speed and low cost. For Alzheimer’s disease, this matters because new drugs can slow neurodegeneration, but only if treatment starts early. For heart disease, detecting rising biomarker levels could give a far more accurate risk profile than current methods. If validated, the QbQ system could be deployed first in academic labs to accelerate development of diagnostic panels, then eventually in GP surgeries, pharmacies, and hospitals as a certified point-of-care test. That would allow the NHS to screen for multiple conditions cheaply and routinely, catching diseases earlier than is now possible. The project brings together Genetic Microdevices, University College London, and the Centre for Process Innovation to build a commercial benchtop device and test it for cardiovascular and dementia biomarkers.
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Genetic Microdevices Ltd has developed a small device - the QbQ chip- that can analyse proteins in blood with unprecedented sensitivity, speed and cost. The chip can detect minute amounts of disease biomarkers in less than 15 minutes for a cost that resembles that of Lateral Flow Assays. Once the QbQ test chip becomes available it will revolutionise Point-of-Care testing. It will enable detection of conditions that carry biomarkers in blood, much earlier than is currently possible. For example early detection of Dementia can massively improve therapeutic outcome, since for the first time there are drugs available that treat Alzheimer's at its cause to slow down neurodegeneration. Similarly in Cardiovascular disease, detecting low levels of biomarkers that are trending up in blood can create a much more accurate risk profile for future illness. The same is true for cancer biomarkers where early detection is absolute key for therapeutic outcome. However the ability to detect disease much earlier must be accompanied by high speed and low cost per test. Because only then, can screening processes in the NHS become viable. The QbQ system has already demonstrated its superior performance in our lab. What remains to be done is to create a small benchtop machine that is close to a commercial form and validate it with our collaborators in two assays: One for cardiovascular disease and one for dementia. Once the technology is validated it will be ready for early deployment in academic settings to accelerate development of advanced diagnostic panels for Dementia, CVD, Cancer and many other conditions. Ultimately we shall further develop those tools into fully certified diagnostic tools for the Point-of-Care. At that point the QbQ will be placed in hospitals, universities, pharmacies, and GP's for testing of a wide spectrum of conditions. The project is deeply collaborative, it brings together Genetic Microdevices, The Great Ormond Street Institute for Child Health and Centre for Process Innovation. This wealth of know-how ensures optimal delivery of the technology to the patient.
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