Lumos Diagnostics announced the closing of U.S. $15 million in Series A funding from Planet Innovation, an Australia-based healthtech innovation and commercialization company.
Lumos Diagnostics advises funding will support the international commercial expansion of the FebriDx® rapid point-of-care (POC) test, the FebriDx U.S. FDA pivotal clinical trial, and additional development and manufacturing resources for the company’s expanding full-service POC business.
Lumos Diagnostics, a spinout from Planet Innovation, merged with RPS Diagnostics in May 2019, creating a diverse healthcare company that combines the FebriDx test and commercial experience with a novel and proprietary digital reader platform. Sam Lanyon, chairman of the board for Lumos Diagnostics and co-chief executive officer for Planet Innovation states, “Planet Innovation is focused on breakthrough technology and making investments that will have a global impact on healthcare. It is obvious that Lumos Diagnostics is poised for rapid growth and Planet Innovation is keen to support and accelerate the process.”
FebriDx is a rapid POC test that provides clinicians with an in-office assessment of the body’s immune response to acute respiratory infection (ARI). More than 50% of all unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions are for outpatient ARIs which may be associated with nonspecific flu-like symptoms, including fever, sore throat, cough, nasal congestion, and fatigue. Only bacterial infections benefit from antibiotic treatment. The single-use FebriDx test identifies patients of all ages within 10 minutes who have a clinically significant underlying infection and aids in the differentiation of viral and bacterial ARIs through the simultaneous detection of both Myxovirus resistance protein A (MxA) and C-reactive protein (CRP) directly from a fingerstick blood sample.
MxA is highly specific and elevates in the presence of acute viral infection while CRP is a nonspecific inflammatory protein that elevates in the presence of clinically significant infection. The simultaneous, combined interpretation of both MxA and CRP leads to sensitive and specific test results. With a 97-99% negative predictive value for ruling out bacterial infections, the FebriDx test may help to limit the amount of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions that can lead to avoidable adverse reactions and antibiotic resistance, resulting in lower costs.
Robert Sambursky, MD, president, and chief executive officer of Lumos Diagnostics states, “FebriDx helps advise antibiotic decisions for outpatient ARI while saving clinician time, improving workflow and reducing overall costs. The novel digital reader technology that Lumos offers as part of our complete POC service solution will be used in the next generation digital FebriDx test, providing faster time to results, identification of the rare co-infection and enhanced objectivity of test result interpretations.”