Funding
High-Tech Gründerfonds has invested €500,000 in the newly-formed Humedics, enabling the spin-out from Freie Universität Berlin and the Charité University Hospital to further develop its point-of-care liver function test and advance it through to approval.
Humedics’ LiMAx test was developed at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin by Martin Stockmann and refined into a measurement system in collaboration with Karsten Heyne of Freie Universität Berlin,
LiMAx measures liver enzyme levels. A reagent is administered to the patient, which is then processed in the liver. The decomposition product is then measured in exhaled air using a newly-developed device. “The accuracy of the reading enables therapies to be better adapted to the individual patient,” said Stockmann.
Diagnosis of liver disease is problematic in everyday clinical practice because liver enzyme readings from the blood only show a change, but they do not accurately measure liver function. It can therefore happen that laboratory readings are normal despite the onset of cirrhosis. The new test will detect the initial symptoms of illness.
The system makes it possible to improve the planning of surgical intervention involving the liver, to predict post-operative liver failure, to indentify cirrhosis of the liver and to monitor liver regeneration. The system is applied in liver surgery including transplants, the filed of hepatology as a whole and in intensive care. It has already been successfully tested on several thousand patients.
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