Magnasense’s Technology
- Sensitive, Quantitative Lateral Flow Tests
- Affordable, Portable
- User-friendly
- Rapid
- Compatible with laboratory IT systems
- Widely applicable but,
- Closable by software key
Technology Background
Point of Care (PoC), also called ”Point of Need” or ”Near Patient testing”, is expanding rapidly. The professional PoC market is currently over 5,000 million USD and it is estimated to grow annually at 10 %.
There are several drivers for this, all of which are related in some way to increasing cost efficiency:
- Decentralisation of primary care.
– Diagnosing and treating patients in the community can reduce the load on expensive secondary care centres - The realisation that accurate diagnosis linked with prompt treatment, increases compliance, while reducing drug usage and side effects
- The development of user-friendly technologies makes it attractive for primary care centres to perform tests and retain the revenue
The challenge is to develop sensitive and easy to use assays with the same quality of results as big service laboratories.
The most commonly used format for PoC immunoassays is the lateral flow device.
The sample is placed in a reaction cup, where it dissolves reagents, and the mixture is then drawn along a strip by capillary attraction. As it does so, it reacts with antibodies and other reagents until it reaches a reading zone. Here, the antibodies and their captured analyte are read.
However, the basic colorimetric and fluorimetric systems suffers from a basic drawback in that only a small part of the captured antibody is read. They can only read the surface of the strip. Over 90% of the bound antibody is not measured. Furthermore, biological material can contain coloured and fluorescent substances that must be compensated for.
The replacement of colourimetric or fluorescent labels by paramagnetic labels solves these problems and enables the development of lateral flow tests with increased sensitivity and precision.
The current Magnasense Technologies Magnia® reader is optimised for lateral flow tests but the technology can easily be modified for microfluidic technologies.
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