Funding awarded to develop Covid-19 test with results in under an hour

File photo of Covid-19 testing in Croke Park

A Dublin medical technology firm and researchers at Queens’ University in Belfast are part of an international group awarded almost €1 million in EU funding to develop a Covid-19 test that will deliver results in less than 60 minutes.

Hibergene Diagnostics Ltd and Queen’s University are partnering with a medical technology company in China, Medcaptain, and a hospital in Italy, IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, in a new €930,000 research project funded under the European Union Horizon 2020 programme.

The study is trialling the potential use of rapid diagnostic technology that has been developed for other infectious diseases, such as bacterial meningitis, and which can provide ‘real-time’ results in less than an hour.

The Covid-19 project comes on the back of initial research that developed a prototype test for meningococcal disease, which was carried out by Belfast Health and Social Care Trust in collaboration with researchers at Queen’’s University.

The resulting prototype was licenced exclusively to Hibergene Diagnostics Ltd, which went on to develop and market a rapid meningitis test worldwide that uses a mobile device to enable on-site testing with fast results.

The Dublin-based company is now working with research partners in Queen’s University Belfast, Italy and China to further develop this Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technology for use in testing for Covid-19.

One of the key advantages of the LAMP technology is that it can work with crude samples, such as a swab, to deliver fast, highly accurate test results.

It is hoped the research can bring to market a mobile battery-operated device that can be used on site in hospitals and other healthcare settings to deliver results in less than one hour.

“Rapid diagnosis and reporting of results is the key to containing the Covid-19 disease and this test can play an important role in its diagnosis and control,” Seamus Gorman, CEO of Hibergene, said.

Developing a test that can yield rapid results will also save time and resources, as it will enable clinicians to test for Covid-19 on site and eliminate the need to send test samples to a centralised laboratory for analysis. Another advantage of the technology is that it requires minimal training and equipment.

The research project has been underway for eight weeks but it is not yet clear how long it might take the research group to use the existing technology to develop a rapid Covid-19 test for use around the world.