Content area
Full text
Company
MyCartis, headquartered in Zwijnaarde, Belgium with a branch office in Lausanne, Switzerland, was jointly formed in July 2014 by two innovative companies. The Lausanne-based Evalution(TM) business unit was spun out of Biocartis (Mechelen, Belgium) and brings the high-end multiplex technology to the company. They joined forces with Pronota (Zwijnaarde, Belgium), a company focused on next-generation biomarker discovery directly linked with early clinical validation. Together with a new investor base they believe that their combined knowledge will make a huge impact on the research and clinical diagnostic market in the future.
Biomarkers in healthcare
Healthcare, in its true sense, should be all about making sure that people stay healthy longer. In current clinical practice, it is more about taking care of the sick people. Biomarkers play an essential role in assessing the physical state of an individual in order to keep or get them healthy. Diagnosis of complex diseases, guidance in therapy or prediction of disease outcome or progression are just some of the questions biomarkers can provide answers to. Specialists have come to the conclusion that such complex questions cannot be answered using a single biomarker but that a combined knowledge about many markers is needed. Moreover, such a syndromic panel consists of markers of different nature like proteins, nucleic acids and small molecules.
Most biomarker analysis technologies used in current clinical practice allow the detection of single biomarkers or multiple biomarkers of the same nature. With Evalution, MyCartis introduces a technology [1] that allows the qualitative and quantitative detection of multiplex panels, no matter their nature, using simple and robust workflows. As Evalution is an open platform it enables researchers to validate their multiplex panels more easily and to bring them to market. As such, this technology helps bridge the gap between biomarker discovery and clinical use.
Company technology
The Evalution technology [1] consists of three major features: a novel type of digitally encoded microparticles; a uniquely designed assay plate composed of 16 individually actuated microfluidic channels allowing fast kinetics; and an instrument with software that provides the user with dynamic control over assay conditions and tools for data processing and reaction monitoring. Hence all steps of a typical assay protocol such as incubations, washing and optical readout are integrated in a...