Antimicrobial Resistance threatens modern medicine itself.
Senzo is developing the world’s most accurate POC self-test to improve diagnosis and reduce antibiotic misuse. Reducing antibiotic misuse is one of the most effective ways to combat AMR.
Tackeling antibiotic misuse
AMR is ultimately caused by the use of antibiotics with the rate of AMR correlated to the amount of antibiotics used. One complex challenge presented in combating AMR within healthcare is the notable misuse and over-prescription of antibiotics. This is particularly clear in cases of respiratory tract infections (RTIs). According to the 2020 paper ‘Efficacy And Safety Of Rapid Tests To Guide Antibiotic Prescriptions For Sore Throat’, "Between 50% to 70% of pharyngitis cases are treated with antibiotics, despite the majority of cases being viral in origin" [source]. "Evidence shows a high rate of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions in primary care in Europe and the United States. Given the costs of widespread use and associated antibiotic resistance, reducing inappropriate use is a public health priority"[source]. “Even though bacteria are estimated to cause a minority of community-acquired acute respiratory tract infection (CA-ARTI) cases in Europe, CA-ARTIs account for around 40% of antibiotic prescriptions by general practitioners (GPs) in the Netherlands.”[source]
amr primer
Download our primer document on Antimicrobial Resistance.
A New Type of Test
Senzo has developed a lateral flow test with a 0.005 TCID50/ml detection limit. That is 10,000 times lower than current lateral flow tests and comparable to PCR but with no specialist equipment or training required.
This increased sensitivity enables, for the first time, the fast and affordable identification of infections, by the patient or healthcare professional.
Our mission is to dramatically reduce the misuse of antibiotics through better diagnostics.
ACCURACY
To demonstrate the capability of its Amplified Lateral Flow (ALF) technology, Senzo commissioned three 3rd-party, head-to-head, blind studies to independently assess and verify its accuracy against PCR. The studies were conducted by: (1) Sheffield University, (2) University College London, and (3) LateralDX
The studies collectively showed ALF tests to have >99% concordance with PCR across 75 positive and 75 negative samples and demonstrated the ability of an ALF test to identify positive COVID-19 samples with low viral load, for example, those with Ct values higher than 30. Multiple studies have shown that existing lateral flow rapid antigen tests are unable to detect low viral load Covid-19 virus in patient samples. This results in a high false-negative rate, undermining test accuracy.
COVID-19
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HIV
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Flu A/B
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Hepatitis C
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Tuberculosis
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C. Difficile
COVID-19 │ HIV │ Flu A/B │ Hepatitis C │ Tuberculosis │ C. Difficile
