SME Instrument grants €3m to health technology company

Health technology company MeMed Ltd. has been awarded a €3m Horizon 2020 grant for its Respiratory-ImmunoDx project.

The three-year award was granted through the SME Instrument, which targets high potential SMEs with groundbreaking products that could profoundly impact the EU economy and healthcare worldwide.

MeMed’s proposal came in first ahead of 89 other competitive applicants.

“We are excited by this unique vote of confidence from the European Commission,” said Eran Eden, PhD, CEO of MeMed. “This funding will accelerate our development efforts and enable us to help a wider range of patients sooner.”

The award will be used to support development of MeMed’s second-generation product which allows rapid measurements of a patient’s immune response to infection at the point of care. It will also be used to fund a multicentre prospective clinical study focused on using the technology to help accurately diagnose patients with lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI).

The study will enrol over 1,000 patients and be conducted in co-operation with leading research centres at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, UK; Hannover Medical School, Germany; and Rambam Health Care Campus, Israel.

LRTIs are a leading cause of sickness and mortality in both children and adults worldwide. Each year in Europe, 30 million people contract an LRTI, resulting in more than one million hospitalisations and 230,000 deaths. Annual LRTI-related costs in Europe are estimated at €46bn.

“LRTIs, primarily pneumonia and bronchitis, are a major leading cause of death and ill-health worldwide,” said John Hurst, MD, reader in respiratory medicine at University College London.

“This innovative new diagnostic test aims to provide clinicians with simple, accurate, and actionable information, at the place and time when it is most needed, to guide appropriate therapy and improve management of patients.”

The award builds on MeMed’s progress in recent months on its disruptive technology platform, which leverages the fact that bacteria and viruses spark different pathway responses in the immune system. Through extensive screenings of immune system proteins in thousands of patients with acute infections, MeMed’s researchers have identified and validated unique protein signatures that effectively distinguish bacterial versus viral infection.