Iceni Glycoscience’s diagnostics portfolio is mainly focussed on respiratory viruses. It exploits the HPGR™ principle, where each virus interacts with glycans specific to the virus and specific for each host. The discrimination provided by the carbohydrate-virus interaction allows flexibility and adaptability of the platform. Iceni Glycoscience offers an alternative to genetic-based detection (PCR) or antibody-based (standard LFD) platforms, exploiting the highly conserved carbohydrate binding across different strains.
We have demonstrated that the glycobiology behind the HPGR™ can be translated into a variety of diagnostic platforms and hold its own against tests in the recent growth areas of NAA technologies such as LAMP, recombinase polymerase amplification, and hand-held PCR. Critically, the carbohydrate binding characteristics of host-pathogen characteristics are highly stable, making such assays less vulnerable to pathogen mutations.
Currently, we are addressing the need to utilise different sample types – blood, serum or plasma (BSP), saliva, nasal mucus, faeces, urine, sweat, vomitus and tissue samples. Pathogens can be readily detected individually, but we are focussing future development on multiplexed assays that will determine the cause of any respiratory disease in a rapid and reliable manner. This may be critical for health surveillance programs and may help predict future infection outbreaks with pandemic potential.
