Public Funding for Nidor Diagnostics Limited

"Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a chronic (life-long) gastrointestinal disorder, which negatively impacts upon the quality of life of the circa 10% of affected adults worldwide. IBS sufferers experience severe abdominal pain, bloating and a change in bowel habit (e.g. diarrhoea) making everyday life challenging. Due to a lack of a diagnostic test, the current health guidelines advise clinicians to rule out other disease before the diagnosis of IBS is recognised. This means patients are exposed to lengthy invasive tests highlighting what the patient does not have (e.g. Crohn's disease, cancer etc.), rather than from what the patient is suffering. This process can take many months or years, can lead to a breakdown in trust between the patient and the clinician/GP, and is costly (in terms of time, resource and money) to the health service. When an IBS diagnosis is agreed, treatment can take months to show evidence of working -- further stretching patient trust. Unfortunately, only a proportion of patients will respond to the initial treatment, which is a restricted diet (either due to poor diet compliance or the inability of the patient to respond _per se_) and drug treatment is then used as a last resort. Nidor has developed new diagnostic tests that give for the first time a positive diagnosis of IBS and additionally stratify patients into which type of therapy would be most effective. This is a technology that enables early and accurate diagnosis to inform patient treatment thereby improving patient outcomes and reducing healthcare costs. This will reduce the demand for invasive investigations, improve patient satisfaction, and reduce the prescription of unnecessary drugs while rapidly servicing the patient's needs. The award of the grant will enable the collection of suitable patient samples for the test validation, develop the in-house manufacture of the sensor and the mark 1 instrument to a recognised quality standard, refine the data analysis techniques of the sensor results and provide an estimate of the financial savings the tests could deliver to the NHS. The project is expected to take 21 months and will allow Nidor to validate the test(s) to a point where it can be offered as a centralised laboratory testing service to improve patient outcomes."