Noul, CDC to start Malaria diagnosis project in Kenya

South Korea's Noul Co., an in-vitro diagnostics maker and artificial intelligence (AI)-based blood and cancer diagnostic platforms company, said on Monday that it will commence a malaria diagnosis project, led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI).

Kenya experiences 3.5 million malaria infections annually.

According to Noul, this project will run from July to December and involve 2,000 patients at four medical institutions in Kisumu and Siaya, regions endemic to malaria in western Kenya.

The project will compare and evaluate Noul's decentralized diagnostic platform miLab, against rapid diagnostic tests and local microscopy examinations to verify its clinical utility as a malaria diagnostic tool.

The miLab is an automated compact device that utilizes morphological diagnosis.

It can diagnose malaria even in cases with the plasmodium falciparum histidine-rich protein 2 and 3 gene deletions, which are spreading in Africa.

Write to Dae-Kyu Ahn at powerzanic@hankyung.com