Predicting which sepsis patients will deteriorate is one of the hardest calls in intensive care medicine. A study published this week in Critical Care Medicine found that a nucleosome blood test can predict — independently of other standard markers — which patients will die within 28 days or need machines to replace failing kidneys.
The paper, a secondary analysis of the SISPCT randomised controlled trial, found that levels of H3.1 nucleosomes — proteins released when immune cells self-destruct in the process known as NETosis — were significantly higher in patients with septic shock than in those with sepsis, and tracked directly with the severity of acute kidney injury. An independent editorial published alongside it in the same journal said H3.1 may identify "a biologically distinct subgroup of patients with NET-mediated organ injury."
Shares closed 47.70% higher at $0.5010, on dollar volume of about $229 million, against a free float of about 6.5 million shares.
For a holder, the peer-reviewed paper does two concrete things: it gives the Nu.Q NETs biomarker a level of clinical credibility that internal company studies cannot, and it appears in a journal read by the intensivists who would order the test. The company says it is in active licensing discussions with more than a dozen diagnostic companies, but no dollar values or timelines are attached to any of them.
One development worth separating from that finding: the company says it has built a prototype that works on a finger-prick blood sample, the way a home pregnancy test does, and has shown it correlates with the established CE-marked automated test in ICU patients. That prototype has not been peer-reviewed.
In a corporate update released the same day, VolitionRx reported $1.4 million in first-half 2026 revenue, more than double the prior-year period, according to the company's release. No breakdown by product line was given. The company also said it has submitted a clinical manuscript for its feline lymphoma test — which, according to the release, detected 86% of feline lymphomas at 97% specificity — to a peer-reviewed journal. A $5 million contractual milestone payment is expected to follow publication.
A government-backed program in France, budgeted at about $7.3 million, is due to start enrolling patients in the third quarter of 2026. That program, called DETECSEPS, would evaluate Nu.Q NETs in an interventional real-world setting — a step beyond the secondary trial analysis that produced this week's paper.
The $5 million payment depends on publication, not on submission. The manuscript is still in review.