Though vaccines for certain strains of the Ebola virus are now available, they don’t cover all common forms of the disease, meaning that outbreaks continue to occur across Africa with some regularity. When that happens, early diagnosis and treatment are key to reducing the case and death rates—which is where Boston-based startup Satio comes in.
Satio is developing a line of blood-sampling devices that collect samples through a mechanism built into an adhesive skin patch. That approach aims to contain the exposure to pathogens that may occur with traditional blood-collection methods.
The company is building versions of the technology to examine both dried blood spots and whole blood samples, which are now set to be combined with an Ebola diagnostic immunoassay from Senegal’s Institut Pasteur de Dakar to create an all-in-one blood-collecting and -testing platform for the virus, Satio announced last week.
The resulting patch-based diagnostic is meant to offer a low-cost, rapid testing option for Ebola. Satio said in the announcement that it’ll specifically focus on getting the tests into the hands of community health workers in remote areas, where access to fast-moving and reliable diagnostics may be scarce.
That affordability and accessibility will come from Satio’s decision to work with Sapphiros to churn out the testing devices since the Boston-based diagnostics manufacturer is home to an extreme-volume manufacturing process that was originally funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to get low-cost infectious disease diagnostics into the hands of low- and middle-income countries.
Satio’s process of developing the new single-use rapid Ebola test will be helped along with an undisclosed amount of funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The backing has been bestowed via BARDA’s Division of Research, Innovation and Ventures, or DRIVe, which is aimed at funding early-stage companies developing technologies that could mitigate future public health emergencies.
And while the BARDA-funded project will start by combining Satio’s blood-sampling technology with the Ebola immunoassay, the company noted that the resulting rapid-testing device could ultimately be expanded into other diseases that are carried in the blood, including HIV and syphilis.
“Satio’s patch-based blood draw, diagnostic and drug delivery platforms are designed to transform workflow in healthcare. This partnership between BARDA DRIVe, Institut Pasteur de Dakar, Sapphiros and Satio allows us to develop low-cost, high-performance diagnostics to respond rapidly to biosecurity threats, such as ebolavirus,” Namal Nawana, Satio’s founder and executive chairman, said in the announcement.