TORONTO – Zilia Inc. has raised C$4 million (US$3.16 million) in seed financing to push new ocular diagnostic technology to regulatory finish lines in the U.S., Canada and eventually Europe. Zilia co-founder and CEO Patrick Sauvageau said the Zilia Ocular is alone in measuring oxygen saturation in the eye, an important biomarker for eye diseases such as glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration.

The FDA granted de novo marketing authorization for Paige Prostate, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software that improves detection of prostate cancer. The clinical study submitted to the FDA demonstrated that using Paige Prostate resulted in a 7% improvement in sensitivity in correctly diagnosing cancer, increasing from 89.5% to 96.8%.

LONDON – A pan European research project is working with manufacturers and clinicians to set measurement standards that will transform magnetic resonance images from 2D and pictorial, to 3D and quantitative, significantly increasing their diagnostic power. The project, led by the U.K. metrology body, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), aims to introduce consistency and specificity for diagnosing specific conditions, by setting independently verifiable ways of noninvasively measuring lesions and the composition of different tissues and organs.

The med-tech regulatory picture is already in a state of flux thanks to changes imposed by the EU, but device makers and those in the digital health space might soon be facing yet another series of profound changes in Europe. The U.K. Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has proposed to revamp its regulatory framework for both traditional medical device and for software/artificial intelligence, adding yet more uncertainty to an already turbulent European regulatory environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic is still swirling about, and rapid antigen tests are still playing a vital role in pushing back against the COVID-19 pandemic, and Australia’s TGA has responded with a guidance on when software used with rapid antigen tests qualifies as a regulated device. The TGA has classified such software as a class 3 device when used with a rapid antigen self-test, thus requiring a separate regulatory application before it can be eligible for entry in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG).

Prophet, Oncohost Ltd.’s artificial intelligence-driven proteomics profiling platform, predicted response to immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy in non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients in a study presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Virtual Congress 2021. While ICI can generate a significant positive response in some patients with advanced NSCLC, in others the therapy promotes tumor growth, making identification of likely responders prior to treatment critical.

The U.S. FDA has cleared Memed Diagnostics Ltd.'s blood test for distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections. The diagnostic test has been tipped as an essential step in the fight against antimicrobial resistance. While most infectious disease tests look for the pathogen, Memed BV is an advanced host immune response test that measures the levels of immune system proteins and applies proprietary algorithms to generate an immune signature.

Researchers have retrospectively divided more than 16,000 non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with EGFR mutations into four structure-based subgroups, and looked at how the members of each subgroup fared depending on which EGFR inhibitor they were given.

LONDON – Researchers in the U.K. have applied the heft of national population-level databases to devise a new algorithm that predicts those people who are most at risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, despite having received two doses of vaccine.

PERTH, Australia – After raising AU$20 million (US$14.62 million) in a series A round, serial entrepreneur Paul Hopper is unveiling his newest venture, Radiopharm Theranostics Ltd., which is developing a platform of radiopharmaceutical and nuclear medicine products for both diagnostic and therapeutic uses.