RheoCare SIGNED

Project "RheoCare" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

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Map

 Project objective

Chronic respiratory diseases are expected to become the third cause of mortality worldwide by 2020. Patients experience periodic acute exacerbation phases favouring infections of the lower airways and causing irreversible loss of pulmonary capacity. These crises cannot be forecast with current techniques and require emergency hospitalisations, leading to healthcare costs (€24k per crisis) and antibioresistances due to wide-spectrum treatments. Among respiratory diseases, we choose to target cystic fibrosis (CF) in Europe as organised care structures pre-exist. CF also represents a very attractive market segment of $4.5B across the Group of Eight (G8). Rheonova develops a unique monitoring test based on the rheology of lung secretions (mucus). The RheoCare project will provide a dedicated plug-and-play rheometer, with a quantitative biomarker and a specificity above 80%, allowing a point-of-care CF monitoring test within 10 minutes as a first step towards personalised healthcare. Our four-patent-protected technique already assesses treatments efficiency and is commercialised to researchers. Phase 1 clinical trials have demonstrated the reproducibility and the robustness of our biomarkers. Two new clinical protocols (Phase 2) proceed in order to demonstrate the medical benefit for the patient, i.e. the reduction of hospitalisations by predicting the exacerbation phases and assessing treatment performance quantitatively. Within three years, Phase 3 clinical trials will support the commercialisation of the device in EU and China. We will address the medical market with an attractively-priced machine accompanied with specific consumables needed to test mucus samples. To support our ambition, we need to implement an automated sample manipulation device. Three priority tasks remain to complete the feasibility study: (i) remoulding the software, (ii) supporting our commercialisation plan, and (iii) defining the IP strategy regarding this new building block.