Summer of 2011 brought – amongst record rains and rare floods in Denmark, an solicitation notice from US-Army to bid in for development of a urine-test (and device) that would help make the right selection of patients at – or close to – the battlefield.
At first we (we being – BioPorto Investors) thought that this fitted like a glove; BioPorto’s triage patent (that has to do with measurement of kidney injury as a result of physical injury up to 6 hours after the incident) and further the patent – application mentions a handheld device- however, BUT when we asked BioPorto, they informed us that the task was “too much too soon” for a company of BioPorto’s size.
The rejection to enter into the solicitation directly is probably not so much based on the test itself (because that part is well handled by the principles of the NGAL test) but because the development of a handheld device (my assumption) would cause a unbearable strain on the limited ressources of BioPorto.
I assume that the US Army decided to team up with Alere – because they have with their POC-apparatus an (almost) handheld device. The belowmentioned seems to support that… ANYWAY – What still puzzles me a bit, is that Biosite’s Triage is – to my knowledge – only a blood sample testing device* – so it might just be a coincidence… (I’ve never been a great believer in coincidences). The other option is that its just two separate researchgroups…
Anyway – a new study was published regarding NGAL and Blast injury
The conclusion as far as I can see is – That NGAL does not discriminate between blast injuries or gunshot injuries – BUT it does give information about stratification of patients
* tender specifically asked for a urine test
