Paperdrop Diagnostics S.L.

This spin-off of ICN2 is a nanobiotech company focused on the development of new diagnostic tools.

Drug-induced injuries (DII) are a little-known public health problem that can cause serious complications and even death. They are caused by kidney or liver failure as a result of adverse drug reactions and/or polypharmacy, the use of four or more medications. This tends to implicate the elderly, which makes DIIs a growing concern in the context of an aging population.

Currently, early diagnosis of DIIs is non-existent and, when symptoms do present, they can often be misdiagnosed as pertaining to another problem, resulting in a prescription cascade. While this is not so common in the clinical trial setting, where DIIs are a known problem and specialist resources are available for their detection, in its chronic form it is down to primary care physicians to diagnose the DII, who do not typically have access to the necessary resources.

Paperdrop Diagnostics S.L. proposes a low-cost, easy-to-use device for just such a situation. Its lateral flow immunoassays and microfluidic paper-based analytical devices are being optimised to detect six key biomarkers known to be correlated with the main DIIs: drug-induced kidney injuries, drug-induced liver injuries and systemic inflammatory response syndrome. And it can do so from a single drop of the patient’s blood.