Assessing drug concentration in blood paves the way to personalized care

By Team IO

Axithra, a spin-off of imec and Ghent University, Belgium, announced a ten million euro seed round to finance its therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) platform. The tool aims at quickly and accurately measuring drug concentrations in a patient’s blood, wrote imec in a press release.

The correct dosage is crucial for many drugs to ensure the optimal effect. It is a constant focus in hospital units with seriously ill or debilitated patients, who often exhibit physiological changes over time, such as those in the intensive care or oncology unit. When administering insufficient doses, a drug loses effectiveness, while excessive doses may cause toxic, potentially fatal side effects. Axithra will develop a TDM platform based on optical technology. It aims at fast and accurate measurement of drug concentrations in blood, enabling timely adjustments of dosages when needed.

Ensuring optimal treatment

As a first application, the spin-off will deploy its technology to measure the concentration of beta-lactam antibiotics in a patient’s blood. This class of antibiotics is by far the most commonly used to treat or prevent bacterial infections and is administered to millions of intensive care patients each year. Axithra’s platform will ensure that treatments can be optimally tailored to the individual patient. Over time, other drug classes will be incorporated in the pipeline. 

Prof. Jan De Waele, an intensivist at the Ghent University Hospital and President-elect of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, commented: “Given the large variation between patients in intensive care, this development will enable us to treat our patients with severe infections better and protect them from possible harm. Because current solutions have long turnaround times, Axithra’s platform will help us to intervene more quickly, improving outcomes of severe infections and reducing the length of stay of patients in the intensive care unit, thereby decreasing costs.” 

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Bringing semiconductor expertise to life sciences

Axithra is an example of how processes developed for the semiconductor industry are now leveraged in the life sciences domain. Imec has built a strong R&D portfolio in this promising area in recent years. Axithra combines imec’s semiconductor process knowledge with the unique photonics expertise of the Photonics Research Group, an associated imec lab at Ghent University. Prof. Roel Baets explained: “Our Raman-on-chip technology is the basis of Axithra’s solution. Raman spectroscopy is a commonly used technique for accurately identifying and quantifying molecules. Integration on a photonics chip makes this technique much more sensitive.”

Dr. Leander Van Neste, CEO of Axithra, commented: “I am delighted with this broad, complementary investor base, including the regional and strategic support. I am convinced we can build our TDM platform to be a true game-changer. Due to the simplicity and speed of our platform, we can customize medication for each patient, even with rapidly changing conditions, and in all sorts of environments, including outside the traditional hospital lab.”