Overview
- Imperial College London researchers published the VeloCD approach in Nature Communications as a proof-of-concept.
- VeloCD adapts an RNA-velocity technique to whole blood to read whether gene activity is rising or falling from a single sample and infer what comes next.
- In pediatric fever data from the EU-funded PERFORM study, the model reduced more than 2,300 RNA markers to 59 that flagged which children were likely to worsen.
- In controlled human challenge studies, early blood samples predicted who would go on to develop influenza or COVID-19, and separate tests suggested IBD treatment response and risks linked to HIV and tuberculosis.
- The team filed a patent and released the tool on GitHub, and they say a hospital test could follow in about five years if larger, prospective trials confirm performance and regulators approve it.