By Shiri Epstein, NoCamels -
Women can now take a pregnancy test at home with just a little saliva instead of the standard, slightly messy process that requires a steady hand and a bathroom break – but with the same high level of accuracy.
The SaliStick test is the creation of Jerusalem startup Salignostics, which has developed and is developing home diagnosis kits for a series of conditions, including COVID-19, malaria and streptococcal pharyngitis (strep throat).
The method for each test is the same, but Salignostics decided to focus on its single-use pregnancy kit first, as it is one of the most common at-home tests on the market, the company’s deputy CEO Guy Krief tells NoCamels.
Regardless of what the test is for, each kit includes two separate tubes – one that collects saliva and the other that has an active ingredient to do the testing. The two pieces, when fitted together, are approximately the size of a traditional pregnancy test.
The user places the tube to collect the saliva, which has a cotton pad on the end, into their mouth. They then suck on the pad – usually for around one minute – until it has absorbed sufficient saliva and the color of the indicator under the pad changes from yellow to blue.
Once the indicator has changed color, the tube is screwed into the slightly larger tester tube. The saliva then drips into the larger tube, which in the pregnancy test contains a check for a hormone only present in women expecting a baby.
Like most other home pregnancy tests, the tube will show one line if the test is negative and two if it is positive.
Results for the COVID test are also the same as other standard tests in which a second line appears if the person is infected.
Krief says all of the tests are extremely easy to use, unlike the multi-stage COVID tests that were difficult for some people to carry out successfully.
“So many people misinterpreted the proper operation,” he says of the COVID test.
The idea for Salignostics originally came from Prof. Aaron Palmon of the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who brought together the other four co-founders – including Krief – who were all his PhD students and specializing in the study of saliva. The researchers further were supported by Yissum, Hebrew University’s tech transfer company to facilitate taking the product from the lab to the market.
Drawing on their shared medical expertise, they decided that there had to be an easier way to diagnose certain conditions and set about trying to create it.
“We thought back then that diagnostics must be more accessible, reliable, rapid and low cost,” Krief says. “And to get this, you have to go to the community level, to domestic use.”
The idea they had was for a saliva-based rapid diagnostic test. Unlike blood, which is generally viewed as sterile, saliva is more exposed to disease due to its location.
“Saliva is the gate to the body,” he says, as it contains viruses, bacteria and other pathogens.
Krief explains that saliva also contains large amounts of the protein salivary amylase, which the body uses to digest food, and they realized this could be used for many different diagnostics.
The next challenge was to ensure that the test was as rapid and airtight as possible, as the properties of saliva change as it leaves the body, even after a short period of time.
In the span of just two hours, saliva is a completely different fluid to the one inside the body, becoming more viscous and losing its high concentration of proteins.
Adaptation & Evolution
When the COVID pandemic erupted globally in early 2020, the team was working on the pregnancy test, Krief explains. They quickly realized that saliva could also be useful for testing for coronavirus and started working on SaliCov – a home test for COVID that even won the startup an award from the US National Institute of Health.
And while Salignostics this month launched its pregnancy test in Israel, working together with the country’s biggest pharmacy chain Super Pharm, this is not the first location where the product was on the market.
SaliSticks was first released in the UK, in the country’s second-largest drugstore chain Superdrug and leading supermarket Tesco.
Once its product was on the Superdrug shelves, the startup surveyed the store’s female customers to see how many would be willing to use the new test. And according to Krief, 70 percent of the young women they asked said that they were open to using it.
The UK launch was soon followed by one in Sweden, which Krief calls the company’s best market as Swedes are more willing to try innovative products. There, Salistick was introduced in every pharmacy in the country and even gynecologists started recommending it.
“In a few months, SaliSticks has already sold over 100,000 units. So it’s encouraging,” Krief says. Around 840 million pregnancy tests are sold every year, according to Saligostics.
And despite the growing sales, the company says it still needs funding from investors in order to keep improving the existing products and creating new diagnostic tests for different diseases.
Currently, Salignostics is working on a test for strep throat, just in time for winter flu season.
Krief believes that in the near future, multiple types of tests will be conducted at home using saliva, providing diagnoses especially for people in countries that don’t have easy access to healthcare.
He cites the example of HIV in Africa, where the World Health Organization says there are more than 25 million people living with the highly communicable disease.
“What’s driving me is that the diagnostics may be much more accessible,” he says.
“People in populations that suffer from lack of capabilities will not die or suffer because they hadn’t been diagnosed.”
