At the end of September, iLoF won the 'Outstanding Graduate Award' at a competition held by Luminate, the largest accelerator for optics and photonics start-ups.
We recently reported on the firm's photonics-AI platform that will soon be used in an international Alzheimer’s trial, with a £1.2M (~$1.5m) clinical research contract from Innovate UK.
The Alzheimer's study, set to span across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, will work with participants with or without memory concerns to help identify blood or digital tests that can predict the presence of amyloid plaques or tau tangles in the brain, which are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
"Our Optomics platform detects label-free nanosized biomarkers in biological liquid samples, to generate specific patient or disease signatures," Luís Valente, CEO & Co-Founder at iLOF, told Electro Optics. "Technically, the platform leverages highly focused, non-destructive laser beams guided by optical fibres that interrogate the biological sample to obtain a digital signal of its backscattered light pattern."
The device combines low-cost photodetectors with lensed optical fibres, currently leveraged on a fluidics system (for increased throughput). "This lensed fibre technology detects elastically scattered photons, which are then fed to an AI pipeline to create a unique fingerprint," Valente added. "When compared to our database, this allows us to detect modifications providing a flexible and agnostic tool that is not limited to a single use or disease."
Based in Rochester, the US, Luminate has invested $18.6 million in 75 startups, and these companies have secured $281 million in additional funding. Today, the portfolio has an estimated value of $675 million, and the companies have created 164+ jobs.
