Prolight Diagnostics

A collaborative research project between Prolight and St Thomas’ Hospital has demonstrated how quickly a cardiac biomarker assay for cMyC, can be transferred onto the Psyros™ point-of-care (POC) system. The study underscores the platform’s potential and its broader diagnostic applications beyond high-sensitive troponin.

As part of Prolight’s on-going relationship with St Thomas’ Hospital, the Psyros™ point-of-care (POC) platform has been used by cardiologist Dr Sam McGrath to generate novel data on the biomarker Cardiac Myosin-binding Protein C (cMyC). The goal of the research was to develop a preliminary cMyC assay on a POC platform as part of Dr McGrath’s PhD thesis.
A key output from this short research study was the speed with which a new biomarker test could be put through a feasibility study and generate data. Dr McGrath carried out his research at the Prolight facility in Kent, being given guidance from the R&D team. After a few weeks, he was able to transfer his cMyC assay onto the Psyros™ platform and generate data in blood and plasma that were comparable to data generated on a lab platform.

“Having spent the first year of my PhD optimising our cMyC assay on a traditional lab platform, it was amazing to see how quickly we could match the performance using the Psyros™ platform. It clearly demonstrates the power of single-molecule-counting and its potential to revolutionise point-of-care testing. Transfer of the assay was straightforward and rapid due to the simplicity of the Psyros™ technology,” said Dr Sam McGrath. “A huge thankyou to the Prolight team for their outstanding support and collaboration throughout this process.”

“The Prolight team remain 100 percent focused on delivering our high-sensitivity troponin assay (hs-TnI), but it is encouraging to see how readily other assays could be transferred onto the platform. As we have stated previously, the Psyros platform will be developed for many more assays than hs-TnI in future. Therefore, Dr Sam McGrath’s research and feedback as a cardiologist is very promising” said Aileen McGettrick, CSO at Prolight.

Dr McGrath is an Interventional Cardiology Registrar at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, and a BHF Clinical Research Fellow at King’s College London. He is supervised by Professor Michael Marber and his PhD focuses on cMyC fragmentation and its potential to distinguish between different forms of myocardial injury. cMyC is a protein found in the heart that is released into the bloodstream after cardiac injury, similar to troponin.