DiagNodus Application Areas

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), largely comprising the two conditions Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis, affects up to 4 people per 1000 in the West. The symptoms of diarrhoea, abdominal pain and bloody stool substantially affect the quality of life of sufferers and complications can be life threatening. IBD is also strongly associated with colorectal cancer development risk.

Abundance of neutrophilic leucocytes in bowel inflammation

DiagNodus technology offers the promise of a simple, self-applied test for bowel inflammation activity detection. This could be used for monitoring patients who are undergoing treatment (for assessing treatment efficiency), or for those who are in remission (for detecting flare-ups early). In addition, the DiagNodus test may be used as a simple approach to distinguish patients suffering from IBD from individuals with irritable bowel syndrome, a functional disorder that can present with similar symptoms.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second most common cause of cancer related death. 1.3 million new CRC cases were diagnosed worldwide in 2010, mostly in the developed world.

The incidence of colorectal cancer is increasing in line with the ageing population. Early detection is key to successful treatment of the disease and related cost management. An efficient screening strategy is essential to detect the disease early, when it often does not produce symptoms. The currently available faecal occult blood test (FOBT) is safe and inexpensive, but it does not detect non-bleeding tumours and its sensitivity is low. Screening colonoscopies popular in the US are expensive to perform, extremely invasive and can sometimes cause serious complications.

The DiagNodus approach delivers results by measuring CRC biomarkers captured on a swab device self-applied by the patient. The adoption of the approach would still require confirmatory diagnostic colonoscopies, but CRC detection rate should be considerably improved.