Your Smartphone Could Soon Test COVID-19; Sanofi Joins Hands With Luminostics

Dusty roads leading up to locked factories have become a common sight in most of the countries and cities as businesses, apart from those manufacturing or selling essential commodities, have been temporarily shut due to the lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

As the infectious disease spreads across the world at an alarming rate, many businesses are gazing at unprecedented shortfalls. The human cost of this pandemic continues to climb, with over 2.2 million cases confirmed globally, and nearly 154,219 people reported to have died from the contagion at the time of writing this. How the world is coping with the coronavirus is worth assessing. Nobody could have predicted the rapid outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching a level where would topple the global healthcare services.

ALSO READ: Five Key things from COVID-19 Guidelines

Healthcare sector’s battle against COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact across all the industries and has shattered the share markets everywhere. In the healthcare industry, there is a steep rise in the demand for hospital supplies along with the equipment amid COVID-19 crisis.

The healthcare industry across the world is leading the fight against the coronavirus. The focus has been on ceasing the spread of the virus. The world has been grappling with a demand-supply gap in essential protective gear such as gloves, masks and sanitisers that are hindering medical professionals from carrying out sample collection and tests which is the need of the hour.

DO READ: Current Challenges & Opportunities in Healthcare Space Amidst Virus Threat

The COVID-19 infections have been pushing the healthcare systems worldwide to the edge, and the role of private healthcare systems in meeting the threat posed by the pandemic has come under scrutiny.

The US, China, Italy, Spain, and the UK have been the worst affected countries, so far, due to the COVID-19 turmoil. Although Spain and Italy have outstanding public healthcare systems in place, they were not equipped to handle the pandemic of this proportion. On the other hand, the Chinese establishments, working under a centralised system, took fast decisions to take control of the situation by building new COVID-19 hospitals with short turnaround time, firmly observing citizens and their movements, and speeding up the manufacturing of personal protective equipment as well as safeguarding their supply to the healthcare practitioners.

DO READ: Ray of Hope amid Coronavirus- Potential Vaccine For COVID-19 is Underway

In the backdrop, we will acquaint you with one global healthcare sector player that is continually focusing on developing treatment/vaccine for the novel coronavirus – Sanofi.

About the Company

Sanofi is committed to assisting people through their health concerns. The Company is a global biopharmaceutical player that is focused on improving human health and is engaged in preventing the disease with innovative vaccines as well as also offer new and advanced treatments to fight pain. With over 100k employees in approximately 100 nations, Sanofi is bringing scientific innovation into global healthcare solutions.

Sanofi and Luminostics Developing a Smartphone-linked Test for COVID-19

The French pharmaceutical Company is collaborating with Luminostics, a Silicon Valley start-up, for developing a test for COVID-19 that patients could perform on their own by applying a device attached into a smartphone.

Moreover, Sanofi is escalating its probabilities to manufacture a vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19 via collaborating with Luminostics. Both the companies will assess a smartphone-based self-checking solution to test COVID-19 infection. As part of the collaboration, Luminostics’ innovative technology and the clinical research abilities of Sanofi will be utilised to develop an efficient test for the pandemic.

As all the nations across the globe are facing difficulty to test adequate patients for COVID-19, the companies hope their novel test would be easy to deploy without the need of a healthcare professional or sending a sample to a laboratory and provide the response in fewer than thirty minutes.

With this collaboration, the proprietary technology of Luminostics for consumer-diagnostics testing of COVID-19 would combine with the clinical research testing competencies and experience of Sanofi. The main objective is to deliver a smartphone-based solution for eliminating the current requirement of medical practitioner supervision or tests for detection of COVID-19 in the laboratories.

The partnership aims to offer a test that is consumer-based and can detect the coronavirus with high sensitivity as well as specificity from the respiratory specimen. The entire time from collection of samples to providing outcomes is anticipated in the range of 30 minutes or less.

The test is based on the unique technology of Luminostics that applies smartphone optics, managed by an iOS or Android application, combined with a low-priced adapter, combined with nanochemistry (“glow-in-the-dark”) and signal processing AI.

The smartphone diagnostic platform by Sanofi is composed of-

Sanofi’s Further Initiatives to Tackle COVID-19

Being one of the leading healthcare companies, Sanofi is in the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, and besides, it is already involved in several clinical studies assessing the present treatment possibilities (Kevzara^® and Plaquenil^®) in COVID-19 patients. Moreover, the Company is also focused on the clinical development of two vaccine programs.

Sanofi stated that the Company would bring its clinical research testing capabilities to the alliance, as well as its global distribution networks, to make sure that the diagnostic reach people around the world quickly if approved.

The Paris-headquartered Company has also teamed up with the UK-based behemoth GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) on a project to develop a vaccine against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Both the companies (Sanofi and GSK) intend to commence phase I clinical studies in the second half of 2020, and if found effective, expect to conclude the development required for accessibility by the second half of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.

TO KNOW MORE, DO READ: GSK Join Forces with Sanofi To Develop Covid-19 Vaccine

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