girl Itching her arm

InstaPatch receives 5.6M DKK in funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark

Medical equipment and systems Health and diseases Micro and nanotechnology
The CACHET PhD project InstaPatch has received funding from Independent Research Fund Denmark. This funding will be used to further expand the project with an additional PhD student and a future postdoc position.

Allergy is one of the world’s most common chronic conditions and caused by immunoreaction of the human body towards in principle harmless allergens. An increasing number of people are diagnosed as allergic towards insect stings, pollen, dust, animal dander, food or drugs. The state of the art method for allergy screening and monitoring is the skin prick test (SPT) where different allergens are introduced into the skin of the tested person. The evaluation of the SPT requires an experienced healthcare professional assessing visible changes of the skin due to local inflammation. This method is non-quantitative, a relatively low number of tests can be performed and patients might experience unpleasant reactions.

The InstaPatch project aims to develop a novel allergy test providing instantaneous and quantitative monitoring of the degree if any, allergic reactions in the skin with a new miniaturised device. The InstaPatch will be less timely, around 15 min for multiple parallel tests, and less painful than SPT's as the device affects a smaller area of the skin and focuses on the surface. This will have a great benefit for, especially children as they are less patient and more pain sensitive, resulting in them having a better experience with "going to the doctor".

Besides a less invasive and more informative allergy test, the InstaPatch will also provide cost savings because it potentially can be performed by less experienced clinical staff than the SPT and in a shorter time.

The project group consists of researchers from DTU Nanotech, the Allergy Clinic at Gentofte Hospital and DTU Food. The technical development of the InstaPatch will be done at DTU Nanotech. Researchers at Gentofte Hospital will assist with both initial in vitro testing and clinical evaluation of the final device. In vivo animal testing (rats) will be performed at DTU Food. Additionally, the project group will collaborate with Malmö University and Cardiff University.
The technology is currently being patented and the goal is to have a commercialised product ready to be used in clinics by 2022.

Read more about the project here.

Contact:
DTU Nanotech: Associate Professor Stephan Sylvest Keller, Professor Jenny Emnéus, PhD student Sheida Esmail Tehrani
Gentofte Hospital: Associate Professor Bettina Margrethe Jensen, Professor Lars Poulsen
DTU Food: Associate Professor Katrine Lindholm Bøgh