Vivacta Initiates Development of Point of Care Test for Vitamin D
Demonstrates that small molecules can be rapidly measured in whole blood using its unique technology
Vivacta Limited, a medical diagnostics company for point-of-care testing, announced it has initiated development of a new rapid diagnostic test for measuring vitamin D. Diagnosis of Vitamin D deficiencies and regular monitoring of Vitamin D levels and obtaining results rapidly is potentially important in improving management of a range of diseases including osteoporosis, cystic fibrosis and Crohn’s disease. The test will enable physicians to determine Vitamin D levels in a pin prick of patient’s blood within 10 minutes potentially facilitating community-based diagnosis and therapy. The test is simple to perform and can be used in the physician’s office, at a local clinic or other point of care away from the hospital laboratory. Ultimately the test could be performed by patients at home.
The new project demonstrates that the Vivacta system, which uses piezofilm technology to bring the advantages of immunoassays to the point of care, can be used to measure small molecules such as Vitamin D. Vivacta has also developed tests focused on the detection of large molecules, including a fully operational test for thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and is currently developing a cardiac test panel.
Dr Tim Carter, Chief Executive Officer of Vivacta and co-inventor of the piezofilm platform technology, said: “We are very pleased to have initiated this new programme which demonstrates the applicability of our technology to small molecules such as vitamins and drugs. A number of potential commercial partners have asked us whether our system can be used to monitor drug levels and we wanted to demonstrate this. We chose Vitamin D because of the significant interest in the medical community for enhanced surveillance of vitamin D levels in the general public and to meet the need of patients whose vitamin D levels require regular monitoring. However, vitamin D is only one example among a wide range of small molecules including many pharmaceuticals which can be monitored using our system”.
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