Sugars, Enzymes And Diagnostics (SEAD)

In any infectious disease outbreak, the rapid triage of potential carriers of infection is essential to control the spread of infection and to allocate resources efficiently. Iceni Diagnostics is repurposing the technology most famously used in the home pregnancy test kit to create a new generation of rapid, point-of-care diagnostics. These studies are being carried out in close collaboration with clinical laboratories from the NHS, to ensure rapid feedback on ease of use, sensitivity and specificity with real-life samples. The scientific basis of these new tests relies on the exploitation of the carbohydrates that viruses and bacteria attach to on human cells, which we will immobilise in our devices. The key advantage of this technology is that is easy to produce and can be scaled up, using established manufacture and distribution chains, to meet the substantial demands for immediate and recurrent infectious diseases testing. Specific products under development include devices to detect equine influenza in stables, norovirus in hospital wards, and Covid-19, the latter to support the NHS, homes and individuals wanting to self-test before returning to work, associating with neighbours and family etc. An immediate goal for Iceni Diagnostics is to devise rapid, flexible and scalable ways to make the bespoke carbohydrates required for diagnostics applications. To this end, partnership with Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB) provides access to state-of-the-art knowledge in green ways to make sugars. The secondment to Iceni Diagnostics of an MIB researcher provides an ideal way to build the academic-industry relationships and to provide an individual with a strong University background with experience of how their skills and expertise may be deployed in a biotech/medtech SME setting.