| Project Detail |
By essence, diagnostic procedures intend to look for a certain panel of pathologies according to the risk factors or the symptoms of the patients to prevent further contaminations. This approach is particularly crucial in the context of concomitant epidemics affecting the same kind of populations such as HIV and Viral Hepatitis and Syphilis. Despite the huge effort made on HIV diagnostics, its main co-infections Viral Hepatitis and Syphilis has been widely ignored, particularly in SSA where less than 95% of infected people know their status (WHO 2021). Such underdiagnosis lead 4,5m new infections yearly over the world, and 1,8m deaths with at least 32% occurring in SSA. Those new infections in SSA are mainly due mother-to-child transmission, due to insufficient combined testing of pregnant women. The other cause is due to the present complexity of the testing algorithm to orient HBV pregnant women with active viremia toward treatment. A fully portable, autonomous multiplexed Point of Care device (3kg, 8h autonomy) has been developed. It is capable to perform 4 to 8 immuno-analyses in parallel in less than 15mn filing using 50µL of capillary blood. A first panel has been developed targeting HIV 1 & 2, Viral Hepatitis B and C. The goal of this project is first to evaluate the kit in SSA to see how the technology behave in different environments (Temperature, Humidity) and with blood presenting multiple other infections. MagIA IBC solution will be thus evaluated in lab and in the field among pregnant women to assess the performance and its impact on the Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission (PMTCT) particularly in region with low HIV prevalence where no testing is performed at all. Meanwhile a syphilis screening assay will be implemented and evaluated to better meet WHO Triple Elimination screening. ALAT and HBe-Ag assay will be developed to propose a Test and Treat approach for Hep B and further decrease mother to child transmission of Hepatitis B. |
