The Oregon Business Development Department has awarded a $50,000 Oregon Innovation Fund SBIR Matching Grant (contract # C2022611) to mAbDx to support work on their SBIR funded project Simultaneous Diagnosis of Dengue and Prognosis of Severe Dengue with a Single Point-of-Care Test, NIAID grant number 1R43AI162484-01A1.

Dengue is the most common mosquito-borne viral disease world-wide and the cause of tremendous morbidity, mortality and economic burden. Yearly, there are an estimated 390 million Dengue virus infections, 96 million symptomatic cases of Dengue Fever, and 500,000 cases of Severe Dengue. Untreated Severe Dengue has a fatality rate of 20-40%, but the fatality rate drops to less than 1% with timely in-hospital care. Unfortunately, Severe Dengue is now detected only by skillful observation of clinical warning signs. Worse yet, progression to severe disease can occur within hours, making effective care difficult. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a prognostic test that can identify Dengue patients most likely to progress to Severe Dengue.

A simple, inexpensive Point of Care test that provides timely prognostic results even in resource-limited settings would enable dramatic reductions in Dengue morbidity and mortality, while simultaneously reducing health care costs by allowing clinicians to focus resources effectively and efficiently on patients who may need them most. The goal of the current project is to create a simple, rapid, point-of-care test that can simultaneously diagnose DENV infection and identify a subpopulation of infected patients who are at high risk of developing Severe Dengue because they have heterotypic secondary infections.