NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Bay Area startup Diassess has been awarded nearly $300,000 from the National Institutes of Health for the first year of a two-year project to develop a point-of-care, nucleic acid amplification-based diagnostic device for sexually transmitted infections, with an initial focus on chlamydia.

According to the company, the goal of the Phase I Small Business Innovation Research project is to create a working prototype of a rapid, cheap, user-friendly test for Chlamydia trachomatis with sensitivity and specificity that is comparable to centralized molecular tests.

Should it achieve this goal? Diassess will then seek to test the device on a variety of sample types; develop primers against other STIs such as gonorrhea, human papillomavirus, and trichomoniasis; and ramp up clinical trials for the platform in the hopes of bringing a commercial product to market sometime in 2017, according to a recently published grant abstract.

"We've done some preliminary studies with patient samples, and right now it's very promising because we're getting very high levels of specificity and sensitivity, sort of equivalent to the gold standard PCR that is being done in centralized labs," Ivan Dimov, a cofounder and chief technology officer at Diassess and principal investigator on the new grant, which is being administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Relevant Comments:

As the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world, chlamydia is easily spread because it often causes no symptoms and may be passed to sexual partners unknowingly.

When infected the disease, patients are confused by the symptoms of the abnormal vaginal discharge, painful urination, burning and itching around genitals, painful periods for women, pain and swelling around the testicle for men etc. 

Generally, when you are doubted, you doctor will suggest you do some tests. In the hospital, doctors will use a swab to take a sample from the urethra in men or from the cervix in women and then will send the specimen to a laboratory to be analyzed. There are also other tests which check a urine sample for the presence of the bacteria. However, if this nucleic acid amplification-based diagnostic device has been found, it may be more effective and convenient to make a definite diagnosis.

In clinic, when patients are diagnosed, it is suggested to take antibiotics. But many people are worry about the drug resistance that antibiotics bring to. In order to get a cure and have no side effect, more and more patient have tried the traditional Chinese herbal medicines. For example, diuretic and anti-inflammatory pill, a patented herbal medicine, is made from the pure natural herbs. By taking this pill, men can be cured in about three months and never reappear; fuyan pill for women also can cure chlamydia without any side effect.

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