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Excellent Science INNOVATION
Viral infections diagnostic instrument for early pathogen detection in human samples (viruses and bacteria)
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Market Maturity: Exploring
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Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as having a Very high” level of Market Creation Potential. Only innovations that are showing multiple signals of market creation potential are assigned a value under this indicator system. Learn more
Women-led innovation
A woman had a leadership role in developing this innovation in at least one of the Key Innovator organisations listed below.
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Prepare for Market entry
  • Secure capital
  • Scale-up market opportunities
Location of Key Innovators developing this innovation
Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

The UN explains: "Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers responsible for child and maternal mortality.

Major progress has also been made on increasing access to clean water and sanitation, reducing malaria, tuberculosis, polio and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

However, many more efforts are needed to control a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues."

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon 2020 project VIRUSCAN with an end date of 31/10/2021
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project VIRUSCAN
Viral infections diagnosis demands novel, cheaper and rapid technologies to overcome present constraints. Current gold standard for diagnosis of viral infections is based on pathogen-targeted nucleic acid identification; thus, it cannot discern infectious stages from latent ones and it demands time consuming adjustments when mutations occur or new emerging viruses are to be included in the diagnostic protocols. Lately, optomechanics has served to fundamental advancements in physics, from gravitational wave detection to the study of mechanical quantum ground states but it has not yet delivered its full applicability potential. VIRUSCAN aims to apply frontier advancements in optomechanics to the biosensing and diagnostic fields and to create a new interdisciplinary research community with the goal to advance optomechanics, nanoelectromechanics, native mass spectrometry and biophysics towards clinical applications. VIRUSCAN will provide a novel technology capable to identify viral particles and asses their infective potential through the characterization of two physical parameters: mass and stiffness. Stiffness of viral particles has been recently known to act as a regulator of their infectivity at different stages of the virus life cycle. In parallel, advancements in nanoelectromechanical systems have recently demonstrated that stiffness and mass information from nanoscale adsorbates can be disentangled. Targeting intrinsic physical properties of viral particles will allow developing an open platform that will tackle any virus and their mutations. VIRUSCAN will have impact at all levels by: providing a personalized treatment to the patients, reducing the use of not effective antibiotics, increasing safety in blood transfusions, allowing a quick and trustworthy response to emergency situations (e.g. recent EBOLA in West Africa and the ZIKA in Brazil), reducing the spread of viral infections, reducing costs per analysis and screening of a wide range of pathogens.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 23/07/2019.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 13039