Oxford BioDynamics PLC (AIM:OBD, OTC:OXBOF) shares surged 33% on Wednesday after the company announced it had developed a highly accurate blood test to diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a condition that has long lacked a reliable means of detection.
The AIM-listed diagnostics firm said the test, created with researchers at the University of East Anglia, achieved 96% accuracy in identifying the condition, also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or ME. The peer-reviewed results have been published in the Journal of Translational Medicine.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome affects around 400,000 people in the UK and millions worldwide. It causes extreme exhaustion and other debilitating symptoms, often leading to years of misdiagnosis or uncertainty for patients.
Professor Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, who led the research at UEA, said: “We know that some patients report being ignored or even told that their illness is ‘all in their head’. With no definitive tests, many patients have gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years. This is a significant step forward. For the first time, we have a simple blood test that can reliably identify ME/CFS.”
The test uses Oxford BioDynamics’ EpiSwitch platform, which analyses epigenetic markers (changes in how DNA is folded and regulated) rather than genetic code itself. The company said this approach was key to achieving such high accuracy.
Chief scientific officer Alexandre Akoulitchev said: “With this breakthrough, we are proud to enable a first-in-class test that can address an unmet need for a quick and reliable diagnostic for a complex, challenging-to-identify illness.”
The company is now seeking a partner to co-develop or license the test for clinical use and said the same technology could be used to develop a test for long Covid, which shares some biological similarities with ME/CFS.
Oxford BioDynamics’ EpiSwitch technology is already behind a prostate cancer blood test used in the UK and US, which it says has achieved 94% accuracy.
The stock rose 0.18p to 0.70p.