Breakthrough Victoria to $800,000 in medtech startup Diag-Nose.io
Breakthrough Victoria is investing $800,000 in Diag-Nose.io Medical (DNM), a Melbourne based company improving clinical management and drug discovery for chronic respiratory diseases to potentially improve health outcomes for millions of people worldwide.
Originally established at the Stanford ENT Innovation Program and now based in Notting Hill, Diag-Nose.io is pioneering advancements in respiratory healthcare by focusing on the “unified airway”; the biological relationship between the lungs and nasal passages.
Diag-Nose.io’s flagship product, RhinoMAP, uses proprietary protein chemistry and AI to map out biological subtypes of chronic respiratory disorders. This enables faster, more precise treatment decisions, reducing costs and improving patient outcomes.
Globally, chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) such as asthma and COPD affect more than 450 million people and caused approximately four million deaths in 2019. Current treatments for severe CRDs have high failure rates (more than 30 per cent), leading to trial-and-error approaches to therapy resulting in limited efficacy, adverse events, and poor compliance.
Current methods to measure treatment efficacy and disease progression rely on subjective interpretation of data (imaging like X-ray/CT, breath analysis, lung sounds etc.).
As a result, understanding patient outcomes for research and development of CRD drugs is time consuming and complex and causes unnecessary clinical complications.
A nasal sample is collected using DNM’s patented nasal liquid biopsy device and analysed. The data is then uploaded into RhinoMAP, an AI-powered biomarker analytics platform to determine disease progression and therapeutic responsiveness and in the long-term differential diagnostic recommendation.
DNM is initially focusing on research applications, which have fewer regulatory hurdles and can help generate valuable data for future clinical applications including predicting patient responses to therapy and advancing drug development. The company has already built a strong network of key opinion leaders (KOLs) and early adopters, a key barrier for early-stage medtech companies.
The investment helped DNM create 5 new jobs, growing the team to 10 members, with plans to add another 10 roles next year through the expansion of its clinical and manufacturing capabilities at its Melbourne facility.
Breakthrough Victoria Acting-CEO, Lauren Morrey, said, “Our investment in Diag-Nose.io reflects our commitment to supporting groundbreaking technologies that could make a profound difference to patient outcomes and streamline drug development.
“By enabling faster and more accurate treatment decisions, their pioneering RhinoMAP platform can make a profound impact on millions of lives affected by chronic respiratory conditions worldwide.”
Minister for Economic Growth Danny Pearson, added, “We’re backing pioneering local medtech startups like Diag-Nose.io to develop home-grown technology and products that can help improve and save lives across the state and the world.”
“This investment not only creates high value jobs here in Victoria, it drives economic growth and strengthens our reputation as a global leader in medtech.”
Diag-Nose.io CEO Eldin Rostom, commented, “Together with the new biologics medicines, our RhinoMAP platform will bring us one step closer towards the holy grail of respiratory medicine; helping patients become completely free of symptoms. This progress is only made possible thanks to the dedicated support and investment from visionary partners like Breakthrough Victoria.”
