Linear Diagnostics, a spinout company of the University of Birmingham in the UK, has obtained funding from the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to develop a 20-minute sexually transmitted disease (STI) test to diagnose gonorrhoea and Chlamydia.

The funding will be used to enhance a point-of-care test, which can enable rapid diagnosis of both the diseases in women who have sex with women and men who have sex with men.

It will allow the company to conduct essential work to optimise and validate its platform technology. The test will be able to diagnose infection from rectal and throat swabs.

Linear Diagnostics chairman Brendan Farrell said: “We are aiming to produce a testing platform that will meet the WHO stipulations of being easy to use with minimal training, so people can present for testing and collect their treatment in a single visit.”

Linear Diagnostics will collaborate with UK-based product development consultancy Kinneir Dufort to address the technical challenges associated with extracting DNA from rectal or pharyngeal swabs.

The company’s platform technology deploys linear dichroism to detect pathogen DNA in samples for rapid and precise diagnosis.

Linear dichroism uses a beam of polarised light for the identification of several targets simultaneously in a sample.

Currently, the company is looking for commercial partners for the development of a low-cost, portable, point-of-care diagnostic tool.

This tool will be used to identify Neisseria gonorrhoea and Chlamydia trachomatis from a single sample within a 20-minute timescale.

The University of Birmingham Enterprise CEO David Coleman said: “STIs have a direct impact on sexual and reproductive health and although chlamydia and gonorrhoea are curable, they have to be diagnosed first.

“Even in countries where testing is available, these are expensive lab-based tests which take a number of days to report on. A rapid and easy-to-use diagnostic test could play a significant part in reducing the knock-on consequences of these STIs globally.”

In March 2020, Linear Diagnostics first received £2m in funding for the development of a new platform technology for medical diagnostic testing to provide multiple diagnoses in a point-of-care environment.