A rising class of drugs 'Oligonucleotide Therapeutics'(OTs) offer the potential of treatments tailored to specific genetic sequences of patients, alleviating unique genetic disorders and hard-to-treat diseases.
The biggest challenge OTs face is delivery to target tissues in sufficient quantities. To overcome this, developers have implemented complex chemical modifications on first-generation OTs that enhance delivery and performance.
Simultaneously, the tools used to track second-generation OTs in the body are impacted by these chemistries, which makes assessing their effectiveness and safety during development difficult and prolonged.
Nanovery has built a prototype test 'RNAmeter' based on Nucleic Acid Nanorobotics (NANs) that can measure OTs accurately and easily in a range of bodily fluids and tissues. RNAmeter provides top-level performance in detecting and quantifying all types of OTs, requiring 80% fewer steps and being 75-90% faster.
The project will focus on improving the design process for NAN design for OTs, currently conducted by trial-and-error approaches due to their chemical complexity. This will be achieved by:
1\. Generation of training data sets
2\. Predictive model development based on ML approaches
3\. Software engineering to create an integrated computer pipeline for NAN design
We aim to reduce turnaround and cost for new NANs for OTs from 12 weeks to 2 weeks. This will allow us to get data to developers faster and service more drug development programmes with RNAmeter for the ultimate benefit of patients.
Chronic diseases are responsible for significant incapacities, suffering, and deaths worldwide and impose a severe economic burden on the nation's health systems. They may be prevented, treated, or even cured if detected on time. While medical imaging and surgical tissue biopsies remain the gold standard in disease diagnostics, these approaches are impractical as they are associated with risks, high costs and inconvenience for patients.
Given the ease of collecting blood samples, liquid biopsy is emerging as a superior alternative to surgical tissue biopsies. Liquid biopsy is safe, non-invasive, more convenient, readily, and repeatedly accessible, less expensive, and importantly provides a more detailed molecular and cellular representation of the individual patient's disease. US FDA has approved several liquid biopsy tests as companion diagnostics for targeted cancer therapies such as prostate, lung, and breast. However, current diagnostic solutions for liquid biopsies rely primarily on complex sequencing technologies that are time-consuming and require significant capital expenditure as well as highly qualified staff to run and analyse the results. This limits the availability of liquid biopsies and causes diagnostic delays which can increase treatment costs and decrease patient survival rates.
Nanovery Limited was founded in 2018 to develop a novel diagnostic approach using DNA nanorobots to target specific biomarkers present in blood samples (such as DNA and RNA). This will enable clinicians to conduct the non-invasive liquid biopsies at a fraction of the time and cost while simplifying the workflow required for screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of chronic diseases. The innovative approach is based on nanorobot devices that are added to a blood sample to capture disease biomarkers. The nanorobot produces an easy-to-read fluorescent signal when it binds to the target biomarker if present. As such, it can provide rapid, accurate and sensitive diagnosis, even at an early stage of the disease.
This project objective is to further develop a nanorobot platform technology and assess the sensitivity and specificity of this new approach via preclinical evaluation in relevant environments. Nanovery aims to exemplify its nanorobot technology in liver disease and prostate cancer to address current bottlenecks in screening, diagnosis and monitoring of chronic diseases, offering 10x cheaper and 100x faster point-of-care detection.
Chronic diseases are responsible for significant incapacities, suffering, and deaths worldwide and impose a severe economic burden on the nation's health systems. They may be prevented, treated, or even cured if detected on time. While medical imaging and surgical tissue biopsies remain the gold standard in disease diagnostics, these approaches are impractical as they are associated with risks, high costs and inconvenience for patients.
Given the ease of collecting blood samples, liquid biopsy is emerging as a superior alternative to surgical tissue biopsies. Liquid biopsy is safe, non-invasive, more convenient, readily, and repeatedly accessible, less expensive, and importantly provides a more detailed molecular and cellular representation of the individual patient's disease. US FDA has approved several liquid biopsy tests as companion diagnostics for targeted cancer therapies such as prostate, lung, and breast. However, current diagnostic solutions for liquid biopsies rely primarily on complex sequencing technologies that are time-consuming and require significant capital expenditure as well as highly qualified staff to run and analyse the results. This limits the availability of liquid biopsies and causes diagnostic delays which can increase treatment costs and decrease patient survival rates.
Nanovery Limited was founded in 2018 to develop a novel diagnostic approach using DNA nanorobots to target specific biomarkers present in blood samples (such as DNA and RNA). This will enable clinicians to conduct the non-invasive liquid biopsies at a fraction of the time and cost while simplifying the workflow required for screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of chronic diseases. The innovative approach is based on nanorobot devices that are added to a blood sample to capture disease biomarkers. The nanorobot produces an easy-to-read fluorescent signal when it binds to the target biomarker if present. As such, it can provide rapid, accurate and sensitive diagnosis, even at an early stage of the disease.
This project objective is to further develop a nanorobot platform technology and assess the sensitivity and specificity of this new approach via preclinical evaluation in relevant environments. Nanovery aims to exemplify its nanorobot technology in liver disease and prostate cancer to address current bottlenecks in screening, diagnosis and monitoring of chronic diseases, offering 10x cheaper and 100x faster point-of-care detection.
Nanovery is making use of emerging developments in nanorobotics to develop new approaches to diagnosing the world's deadliest diseases, starting with cancer. Early detection together with close tracking of cancer progression and response to treatment greatly improves a patient's experience and chances of recovery. Medical imaging and surgical tissue biopsies are limited and associated with risks, high costs and inconvenience for patients.
The liquid biopsy, with the convenience of collecting and analysing biomarkers in blood samples, is a potentially more informative and less invasive alternative to tissue biopsies. This intervention is emerging as a breakthrough tool for screening and frequent monitoring. The liquid biopsy comprises the analysis of circulating tumour-derived material including circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) and circulating tumour cells.
Nanovery Limited was founded in 2018 to develop a novel diagnostic approach using DNA nanorobots to target specific cancer mutations in circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), enabling clinicians to conduct simpler, less invasive, faster and cheaper liquid biopsies for cancer diagnosis and monitoring at the point-of-care. The revolutionary approach is based on nanorobot devices that are added to a blood sample to capture ctDNA, and can distinguish tiny genetic mutations originating in cancer cells and leaving trace biomarkers in blood. The nanorobot produces an easy-to-read fluorescent signal when it binds to the biomarker if present. As the nanorobot sequence matches and binds to the ctDNA, it provides specific, accurate and sensitive diagnosis, even when cancer is at an early stage.
This project aims to develop nanorobot prototypes and assess the sensitivity and specificity of the diagnostic approach to address a large unmet need and current bottlenecks to screening and monitoring cancer and beyond.