NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Quanterix today announced it has won a Phase II Head Health Challenge I grant from GE and the National Football League to address the diagnosis and prognosis of brain trauma.
Quanterix will receive $500,000 to develop tests that will attempt to quickly diagnose traumatic brain injuries almost immediately after they occur. The firm will also develop a point-of-care testing device to run multiplex panels of the biomarkers. Quanterix was one of six winners chosen from 16 finalists in the challenge.
The firm's Simoa technology can detect small levels of proteins that serve as biomarkers of head trauma and quantify the severity of injury, Quanterix CEO Kevin Hrusovsky said in a statement.
In January 2014, Quanterix was awarded $300,000 from Phase I of the Head Health Challenge I to identify biomarkers to predict the long-term prognosis of individuals who have undergone acute and repetitive head injuries. Challenge I awards address the diagnosis and prognosis of traumatic brain injury. And in March 2014, scientists from the University of Gothenberg in Sweden published a paper in JAMA Neurology on a study using Simoa technology to measure the protein tau and assess brain injury in hockey players.
Lexington, Massachusetts-based Quanterix has developed single molecule arrays for multiplexed diagnostic testing.