this week in sickle cell news September 14th to the 20th

By Sean Marshall

The medical diagnosis and research company Triangle Park has received a $222,950 grant from the National Institute of Health to “boost its development of a diagnostic test to aid in treating people with sickle cell disease.” As far back as 2006 the North Carolina company explained that if they were to acquire a loan of 19,000 from small business investors in order to peruse funding research into alternative testing for hospitals attempting to diagnose sickle cell anemia.

However the current funding is going towards a BioMedomics' quantitative point-of-care system. The system will test specifically for hemoglobin S and hemoglobin F. The reason behind this is that in the two different types of hemoglobin dictate the severity and often times the survivability of a person with sickle cell disease.

It was explained that “half of the SCD population undergoes frequent blood transfusions aimed at lowering HbS, and about one-third of these patients receive chronic Hydroxyurea therapy with the goal of raising their HbF levels.” The article further explained itself by going on to say “it’s difficult to track and balance the appropriate levels of HbS and HbF, especially because current test procedures take several days to a week for clinicians to get these critical results from remote testing labs.”

The machine should be available to the public but will have a heavy cost for those without insurance.

A link to the original article can be found here: http://wraltechwire.com/rtp-based-biomedomics-nabs-222k-nih-grant/14903029/

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