ECsens

Cancer is a major and growing cause of death. Current diagnostic tools (tissue biopsies, MRI, PET-CT) are invasive, slow and often lack prognostic power. Liquid biopsies, targeting circulating tumour cells or tumor DNA, give more information about the condition of the patient, but require larger sample volumes than most patients can produce. Other bio-analytes are available that are more abundant in patients, but they require state-of-the-art sensitive technology to isolate and quantify these bio-analytes from the very complex medium that is blood. That technology is called NanoDisc.

NanoDisc technology employs a novel lab-on-a-chip approach to detect and count certain bio-analytes fast, without preprocessing, and in tiny amounts of sample. This can help physicians diagnose patients with symptomatic complaints or it can be used in early detection in high-risk populations. Most importantly, it can also be used to monitor therapy in real-time, whereby treatment strategies can be amended based on the patient’s response to the NanoDisc test results. This way, disease progression is counteracted before the condition of the patient degrades too far.