The DIAMONDS consortium focuses on the development of rapid biomarker-based diagnostics that analyse the patient’s immune response to provide a diagnosis or predict severity of disease (providing a Personalised Molecular Signature Diagnosis (PMSD)). The strategy exploits the different patterns of gene and protein expression that are made in response to different pathogens, which are measured using existing devices and new prototypes, such as lab-on-chip technology.
The five-year collaborative, international research project aims to develop tools for the rapid diagnosis of common infectious bacterial diseases, as well as viral and inflammatory diseases.
The molecular diagnostic approach, which will shorten the diagnosis time to under two hours, has demonstrated an accuracy of 95-100% for bacterial infections. Over the next two years, the team will build a data library of the identifiable gene signatures of common inflammatory and infectious diseases such as TB and Kawasaki disease to achieve a faster diagnosis.
The Imperial diagnostics researchers working on DIAMONDS are:
