Vigilant Diagnostics Announces Funding to Advance Its Rapid, Point-of-Care Diagnostic Technology

U of MN Spinout’s Patented Solution Lets Healthcare Providers Diagnose and Plan Treatment While Patient Is Still On-Site

Minneapolis – September 25, 2024 – Vigilant Diagnostics LLC, an R&D-stage company spun out of the University of Minnesota’s Technology Commercialization office in 2014, announced today it has received an additional equity investment of $500,000 to continue its path to commercialization. The company has now raised $2,000,000 in equity funding since its inception, in addition to more than $900,000 in non-dilutive (grant) funding.

“We will use the proceeds from this Seed-2 Round primarily to fund the development of alpha prototypes of our digital reader, supporting our business development efforts with strategic partners,” said Mark Stockhowe, Vigilant’s CEO. “This will advance our progress in monetizing our technology through licensing and pay-per-use fees.”

Stockhowe added that, in order to maintain the company’s focus on R&D while keeping its overhead low, it is partnering with major universities, design engineering firms, and contract manufacturers to accelerate its technologies for commercialization.

“We’re also investigating select promising markets in addition to our initial focus on infectious diseases,” he said. “Our growth strategy includes identifying new applications for our technology and then engaging with strategic partners with existing market presence, distribution networks, and support infrastructure needed to bring solutions to market that leverage our advanced technology.”

Key Advantages
Vigilant’s point-of-care diagnostics solution enables providers to obtain the diagnostics they need for many common illnesses, obtaining results while the patient is still in the office. The company’s “Thermal Contrast Amplification” (TCA) reader uses patented technology to supercharge existing ubiquitous Lateral Flow Assay test strips (“LFAs”) with 10X sensitivity, and is uniquely able to provide quantified results. For many common diagnostic tests, this additional sensitivity and digital quantification enables providers to avoid the overhead and extra costs of shipping diagnostics to central labs for processing.

For the most demanding diagnostic applications, Vigilant’s patented Lateral Flow Assay technology can be used to enhance the sensitivity of new and redesigned LFAs up to 1000x, rivaling the sensitivity of industry-standard – and much more costly — ELISA and PCR tests.

Lateral Flow Assays (LFAs) have been used in clinical settings since the pregnancy test was developed in the 1980s. Today, they are widely used in labs and clinics, and in veterinary and environmental applications, drug testing, and other types of field testing. They are simple and quick to use, requiring only a small sample amount. There are hundreds of types of LFAs on the market today.

Vigilant Diagnostics’ technology has been detailed in nine papers in various peer-reviewed publications, the first of which was published in 2012. The company has three worldwide patents that were issued in 2017 and 2020.

Vigilant Diagnostics was founded by John C. Bischof, Ph.D., who remains active as a board member. Dr. Bischof has been the principal investigator of its technology since the company’s inception. He is the Distinguished McKnight Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, and is also the Medtronic-Bakken Endowed Chair for Engineering in Medicine, Mechanical Engineering. In 2018, he was appointed Director of the University’s Institute for Engineering in Medicine, which is dedicated to advancing healthcare by strengthening research collaborations between engineering and medicine in both academia and industry. Dr. Bischof works in the area of thermal bioengineering with a focus on biopreservation, thermal therapy, and nanomedicine. In addition to his University appointments, he is also Director of the NSF Engineering Research Center Advanced Technologies for Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio), which launched in 2020. His work has been cited more than 15,000 times and he has authored more than 250 papers.

About Vigilant Diagnostics LLC
The mission of Vigilant Diagnostics is to make available to healthcare providers a diagnostic tool to test for infectious diseases at the point-of-care (also called point-of-need) setting. The company has developed and patented a Lateral Flow Assay (LFA) technology – called Thermal Contrast Amplification (TCA) – for use in conjunction with a small, cost-effective, easy-to-use reader device it has designed and is working with strategic partners to commercialize. The company’s technology platform will be licensed to strategic partners in a number of market segments. Its patented technology features industry-leading test sensitivity, approaching that of expensive, time-consuming laboratory tests. The ultimate goal is substantially reducing the economic and healthcare burden of diagnostic testing on society. For more information, please visit https://VigilantDX.com.