Epicore Biosystems and MECFA Announce Collaboration to Expand Access to Wearable Sweat Chloride Testing for Cystic Fibrosis

The collaboration aims to expand access to cystic fibrosis sweat chloride monitoring in the Middle East and other underserved regions.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Epicore Biosystems, a leader in wearable biosensor platforms for continuous, non-invasive health monitoring, today announced a collaboration with the Middle East Cystic Fibrosis Association (MECFA) to advance its next-generation wearable microfluidic device platform for the monitoring and ongoing management of cystic fibrosis (CF). The collaboration pairs Epicore's on-body sweat induction and sensing technology with MECFA's longstanding work to expand access to CF care across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia.

"Every family navigating this disease deserves access to testing that is fast, accurate, and doesn't require a specialized clinic visit," said Christine Noke, President and CEO of MECFA. "That need is especially urgent in the communities we serve. This collaboration with Epicore is a meaningful step toward a future where a child's birthplace doesn't determine how quickly they are treated."

Transforming laboratory sweat testing into real-time, wearable monitoring

Sweat chloride concentration is the gold-standard biomarker for diagnosing CF and, increasingly, for monitoring how well a patient is responding to CFTR modulator therapy. The workflow behind that measurement has not fundamentally changed in decades. A technician stimulates sweat production using pilocarpine iontophoresis, collects the sweat in a separate device, and sends the sample to a laboratory for analysis.

Epicore's wearable sweat-sensing device in development, the Chloride Tracker, simplifies this workflow into a wearable sensor and mobile application. By integrating sweat induction and chloride sensing within a single device, the Chloride Tracker system captures and analyzes sweat in real time, eliminating the need for off-body laboratory analysis. The technology has been clinically tested across multiple CF studies, with results published in leading journals including Nature Digital Medicine, PNAS, and Science Translational Medicine.

"Sweat chloride has served as the diagnostic gold standard for cystic fibrosis for decades, but the way it is measured hasn't fundamentally changed," said Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari, CEO and Co-Founder of Epicore Biosystems. "By integrating stimulation and sensing into a single wearable device, we can make sweat testing and chloride monitoring simpler and more accessible, expanding to outpatient clinics, community health centers, and ultimately in the home."

Closing the care management gap in the Middle East

The need for a simple, low-cost Chloride Tracker system is especially acute across the Middle East and other low- and middle-income regions. Newborn screening for CF remains rare: Türkiye is currently the only country in the region operating a national newborn screening program. Specialized diagnostic infrastructure is similarly scarce.

Clinical testing of the Chloride Tracker system in the region will be led by Marmara University in Istanbul, home to the largest CF center in Europe and one of the field's leading centers for CF research, care, and training.

"For decades we have watched children in our region reach us too late, after the disease has already done harm, simply because a reliable test was out of reach. A device that can confirm and track CF without a laboratory would let physicians across the region monitor children early enough to change the course of their lives," said Prof. Dr. Bülent Karadağ, Director of the Marmara University Cystic Fibrosis Center and Vice President of MECFA.

Scope of the collaboration

The MECFA collaboration is focused on expanding access across MECFA member countries and other comparable low- and middle-income settings. Development of the platform for clinical trial endpoints and post-therapy monitoring in the U.S. and European markets is continuing in parallel, supported by Epicore's internal R&D and global partnerships.

"Early diagnosis and treatment of CF is essential for children to survive and thrive. Lack of access to sweat testing in the Middle East, and in many regions of the world, is a pervasive problem that requires a solution that is widely available and affordable," said Dr. Susanna McColley, Professor of Pediatrics and Attending Physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. "CFTR modulator therapies have shown how important sweat chloride is as a marker of improved function of the protein that causes CF, and it is essential for future clinical trials in populations who less often respond to modulators."

"The CF community has seen remarkable progress in therapeutics over the past decade, but the tools we use to diagnose and monitor the disease have not kept pace. That gap is widest in exactly the regions with the least health monitoring infrastructure," said Preston W. Campbell III, MD, former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. "A collaboration that pairs Epicore's technology with MECFA's deep relationships across the Middle East is precisely the kind of partnership that can turn a promising device into something patients actually use."

About Epicore Biosystems

Epicore Biosystems is a digital health solutions company spun out of Northwestern University's Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics and the John Rogers Laboratory. Its commercial portfolio includes the Gx Sweat Patch®, developed with PepsiCo/Gatorade; Connected Hydration®, a wearable platform for hydration and heat-stress management; and the FDA Class I Discovery Patch® Sweat Collection System for clinical research and biomarker discovery. 

About MECFA

The Middle East Cystic Fibrosis Association (MECFA) is a nonprofit working to improve health outcomes and life expectancy for children and adults with cystic fibrosis across its member countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. MECFA pursues its mission through three core activities: driving early and accurate diagnosis, training clinicians and building CF centers of care, and advocating to health ministries for access to essential CF therapies.

SOURCE Epicore Biosystems, Inc.