Upfront Diagnostics, a Cambridge, UK-based healthcare company focused on discovering novel biomarkers that can be applied to medical diagnosis, raised £1.6m in seed funding.
The investment was led by APEX Ventures’ Medical Fund, with support from SBRI Healthcare and Stroke Association.
The company intends to use the funds to scale its technology and its accuracy for identifying a large artery stroke, expand its team and prepare for clinical approval.
Founded in 2017 by a group of the University of Cambridge students – Gonzalo Ladreda, Dr Edoardo Gaude, Marcos Ladreda and Dr Joshua Bernstock, Upfront Diagnostics has developed a point-of-care rapid blood test to help paramedics and other community health professionals to identify stroke when people suffer symptoms or collapse in the community (out of hospital). It can detect a stroke caused by a large vessel occlusion (LVO) within 15 minutes, allowing patients to be fast-tracked for treatment to a specialised stroke centre, where rapid imaging and surgical intervention can save lives and severity of disability.
LVOne was validated on 270 patients at the Royal Victoria Infirmary Hospital in Newcastle, UK, and it is designed to identify LVO strokes in the ambulance so that patients can be fast-tracked to a thrombectomy-specialized hospital for treatment. This test has been developed with the support of Innovate UK, Newcastle University, Academic Health Science Network, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), SBRI Healthcare, Stroke Association and NHS Foundation Trust.
FinSMEs
27/06/2023