Project: Point-of-Care system for personalized diagnosis and assessment of treatment efficacy for allergies

Acronym	POC4Allergies (Reference Number: ERAPERMED2019-127)
Duration	01/04/2020 - 31/03/2023
Project Topic	Allergy is the most common chronic disease in Europe. Up to 20% of patients with allergies live with a severe debilitating form of their condition, struggling with the fear of a possible asthma attack, anaphylactic shock, or even death from an allergic reaction. The latest review issued by the GA2LEN Network of Excellence estimates that indirect costs due to inadequately treated allergy in the EU range between 55 - 151 billion euro per year (b€/y). If patients were treated appropriately, average savings of 142 b€/y could be realized. However, for effective treatments that cure the progression of the allergies in its pre-symptomatic stages, access to a more differentiated diagnosis is critical. A multidisciplinary team will advance the first low cost device for the simultaneous immune diagnostic based on the detection of selected antibodies from sera sample. We will develop a point-of-care (POC) analytical platform for personalized diagnostic of allergies combining a novel portable Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) system and microfluidics. Aiming at hazelnut and peanut allergies we are tackling two of the most threatening and frequent food allergens. The diagnosis will be based on allergy related peptide epitopes recently identified at Fraunhofer IZI. To avoid patient to patient variations in the serum composition, the antibodies of different Ig-classes subtypes in sera will be selectively pre-concentrated and prepurified by immunomagnetic separation. This will be a significant improvement over current allergy assays and in combination with epitopes, it enables a more precise and predictive personalized diagnosis. Device operation will be validated under laboratory conditions and the final configuration adapted for its use at the hospital level, matching the POC to the patient environment. The envisaged platform will support improved clinical decisions and treatments also in other immunological disorders, fostering a more sustainable health-care system.
Network	ERA PerMed
Call	2nd Joint Transnational Call for Proposals (2019)

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1	Coordinator	France
2	Fraunhofer Institue for Cell Therapy and Immunology	Partner	Germany
3	Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin	Partner	Germany
4	International Centre of Biodynamics	Partner	Romania