How we work, and how we collaborate with clinicians and researchers.
Rea's research began with a question most diagnostics companies never ask: whether clinically validated biomarkers could be detected passively, from a wearable surface, without any active sample collection at all.
At EPFL, in the research group of Professor Carlotta Guiducci, our team engineered biosensors onto flexible substrates capable of detecting cervicovaginal biomarkers in real time. That early work — building a wearable diagnostic surface from first principles — produced the foundational patents and the scientific platform that Rea is built on.
The self-collected swab now under clinical investigation is a deliberate simplification of that platform: a form factor optimised for regulatory clarity, manufacturing scale, and clinical adoption. But the underlying detection capability is broader than a single analyte or a single form factor.
Our first clinical application is a self-collected vaginal swab for preterm birth risk. The test is designed to indicate whether a woman is at elevated risk of preterm delivery, to inform the next clinical conversation with her doctor.
The scientific development of this test has been conducted in collaboration with Professor David Baud, Head of Obstetrics at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). Professor Baud and his team have been scientific partners from the earliest research phase and remain so today.
Most diagnostic tests were designed for clinical settings first and patient experience second. We start from the opposite direction: what would make a test a woman actually wants to take, and can take herself, at home?
We are not trying to discover new biology. The biomarkers we work with are known to the field. Our contribution is engineering a sampling and detection approach that makes those signals accessible outside the hospital, while preserving the scientific rigor that makes them meaningful.
Preterm birth is where we begin. But the scientific foundation we are building goes beyond a single assay. Alongside our lead clinical program, Rea has a patent application pending covering biomarker detection in self-collected samples — a platform that supports ongoing research in maternal-fetal medicine and women's health more broadly.
Much of our work happens in partnership with clinical investigators. We collaborate with maternal-fetal medicine specialists, obstetric teams, and research hospitals on scientific questions that range from single-biomarker validation to multi-analyte research platforms.
For clinical investigators and research hospitals interested in collaborating with Rea, contact science@readiagnostics.com.