The European Innovation Council awarded the AcouSort project AcouSome SEK 26 million to develop technology for exosome-based diagnostics. Exosomes are nanoparticles that enable human cells to communicate vital information with each other. They have potential to open a completely new field within diagnostics, as they can give `status reports' on organs such as the brain and heart, as well as give vital information on tumor diseases, infectious diseases, pregnancy and stem cells conditions.

EIC has announced that they grant AcouSort and its project partners SEK 26 million to develop an acoustofluidic thin-film actuated chip for exosome separation from blood. Of the SEK 26 million, SEK 12.2 million go directly to AcouSort, and the remainder of the funding is distributed to AcouSort's partners Lund University, DTU, and Day One. The project will run for 36 months and is fully funded by the EU.

In 2013, James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology - Medicine for their discoveries of exosomes. Since then, significant research has been done in this field, but so far, very few practical applications have been developed. The AcouSome project aims to develop a technology which separates exosomes from blood to enable a robust and reliable exosome-based diagnostics.

If successful, the outcome of the project could open up a completely new and very promising field within diagnostics. Currently, there are no adequately efficient methods to automatically isolate exosomes from whole blood. The ambition of the AcouSome project is to develop a component which enables a one-step, fully automated process.

Since blood potentially is a highly infectious substance, the aim is to design an affordable disposable solution to minimize the contamination risk implied in all re-usable instruments. One part of the project is therefore to devise a production platform which can ramp up product volumes to achieve a low unit cost. The proposal has been through a tough two-step evaluation process before being awarded.

The final step involved pitching the proposal in front of a panel of six independent specialists.