Rapid response to current outbreak and pandemics

Diagnostics – Platform Six – Impact Study

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light the difficulties in meeting the increased demand of decentralised diagnostics for viruses prone to outbreaks. The FIND programme led by Dr Ana Isabel Cubas Atienzar which is being supported through iiCON’s Diagnostics platform, aims to ensure the availability of accurate and easily deployable rapid diagnostics for future pandemic and outbreak preparedness.

Recent research of this platform on Mpox diagnostics following the 2022 outbreak has provided important insights on what currently commercially available diagnostics technologies fulfill the performance requirements recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and which failed performance and should not be used for diagnostics of this highly infectious virus. Findings of this research highlighted high clinical diagnostic accuracy when using upper-respiratory swabs as an alternative sample type to skin lesions for PCR testing in early stage of the disease. These findings are very promising, as the use of upper-respiratory swabs for early detection of Mpox disease provide a reliable diagnostic strategy for Mpox patients that do not show skin lesions and are in the prodromal phase of the disease. The other finding was the urgent need for rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for Mpox due to the lack of diagnosis accuracy of all the brands evaluated in this research.

WHO declared on the 14th August 2024 a public health emergency of international concern given the significant increase in Mpox cases which has the potential to spread beyond Africa. iiCON’s Diagnostic platform and FIND are continuing working together to further improve diagnostics for Mpox.