Abingdon Health: York firm works on new ‘world first’ rapid test for paramedics to identify strokes
York-based Abingdon Health has announced the launch of a new “world first” blood test designed to enable paramedics to more quickly identify strokes.
The test has been launched by Abingdon customer, UpFront Diagnostics, and will be deployed in partnership with the London Ambulance Service.
Gonzalo Ladreda, CEO and co-founder of UpFront Diagnostics, said Abingdon Health's expertise had been “instrumental in bringing our stroke detection lateral flow test closer to reality".
Abingdon described the test, named the LVOne, as “the world's first rapid blood test for identifying a stroke at the point of care”.
Results are delivered in under 10 minutes from a finger-prick blood sample.
Chris Yates, chief commercial officer of Abingdon Health, said the firm was “delighted” to see LVOne reach UK patients.
He added: “LVOne is a powerful illustration of how lateral flow technology can be applied to time-critical clinical decision making in pre-hospital emergency care.
"Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and long-term disability in the UK, and the ability to identify likely LVO strokes within minutes, in the ambulance, has the potential to deliver meaningful improvements in patient outcomes.
"We congratulate the team at UpFront Diagnostics, London Ambulance Service and the clinical leadership at UCLH on this milestone, and we look forward to supporting UpFront Diagnostics as the programme progresses."
LVOne is designed to help paramedics identify patients likely to be experiencing a large vessel occlusion (LVO) stroke before they are sent to hospital.
The test measures two blood biomarkers: D-dimer, associated with clot formation, and GFAP, associated with bleeding in the brain, to help differentiate stroke types and identify likely LVO patients.
Abingdon said that earlier identification of LVO will enable paramedics to alert hospitals that a LVO patient is coming, allowing them to prioritise time-critical treatment. An estimated 1.9 million brain cells are lost every minute following stroke onset.
The initial deployment by UpFront Diagnostics will equip approximately 280 London Ambulance Service vehicles, covering a population of approximately 6.5 million people, during a six-month pilot.
It comes after late last month, Abingdon announced that it had been awarded contracts worth £4.8m by a US-based customer for the development of lateral flow systems.
The contracts follow a major expansion in the US for Abingdon, where it last year opened a research lab and commercial office.
Speaking on the US expansion, Dr Chris Hand, executive chairman of Abingdon Health, said in March that the move had been “customer led”.
He added: “We opened the research labs and the commercial office there in April last year, and what we found is that customers we were developing products for also wanted manufacturing to be based there.”