New medical test-instrument shows promise -February 2012 Update
LightIntegra, the 2009 BCIC-NVB first-prize winner, has raised more than $3 million from angel financiers to advance its medical test-instrument prototype.
LightIntegra’s product, ThromboLUX, is a quick and simple diagnostic test for determining blood-platelet quality and function, making it easy to screen blood platelets prior to giving blood transfusions to patients. Traditional testing methods are unreliable, time-consuming, expensive and not routinely used. Poor-quality platelets result in ineffective blood transfusions, which affect outcomes for cancer, heart surgery and other patients.
LightIntegra is aiming to save lives by making its platelet-quality testing a regular practice in blood banks and hospitals around the world.
Since winning the BCIC-NVB competition, LightIntegra has hired its first five full-time employees.
Eight European hospitals and clinics in the UK, The Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany are evaluating the test instrument. There is a clinical trial underway at Vancouver General Hospital and the Canadian Blood Services donor centre at UBC is conducting various studies.
“I’m very pleased with our progress,” says Elisabeth Maurer, LightIntegra’s founder and the inventor of ThromboLUX. “It’s really quite amazing to have this instrument being evaluated in so many countries. I’m just really excited about all the interest.”
She says she can’t keep up with hospitals’ demand for prototype instruments to carry out evaluations. One of the reasons is its cost-effectiveness. Maurer says a Swiss hospital has already forecast that using the instrument could save about $1.5 million a year.
While the first clinical trials to determine the test instrument’s effectiveness at determining platelet quality were only begun in fall 2011, Maurer says initial results reveal that the data is trending in the right direction and also shows some benefit to patients who received higher-quality transfusions as a result of the platelet testing.
Maurer hopes to move into commercial production in the second half of 2013.