National award for innovative allergy test
Friday November 28th, 2008
By Jane Collingwood
A new wide-ranging allergy test made by UK experts has received a prestigious award.
Dr Franco Falcone and his team at Nottingham University, UK, developed a test which can diagnose up to 5,000 different allergies at once. It simply needs one drop of blood, to which tiny dots of allergen molecules are added.
The way in which the blood cells respond shows up any allergic reactions.
"The whole idea is to trace what we call our immunological profile, the fingerprint of our immune system which tells us how we react to the things which we are surrounded by," says researcher Dr Marcos Alcocer.
"Our technology is one step towards the ultimate goal of being able to have a full in-vitro diagnostic test for allergy. What we have to do now is examine the results of our test further and then assess how well it works compared to the gold standard techniques currently used for diagnosis. We will then be in a very good position for commercialisation."
The test received recognition on Tuesday (November 25) at the Da Vinci Awards ceremony held at Loughborough University, UK.
Dr Falcone said: "Getting funding from research councils for such a project is not always easy, so this is why Da Vinci award funding is ideal because it is seed funding that we can then use to underpin a major grant application."
Now in their second year, the Da Vinci Awards recognise collaborative projects that may lead to the commercialisation of products to save lives and improve services to patients.
Tags: Allergies & Asthma | UK News
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