Project description
Automation of pathogen antibiotic resistance tests
Antibiotic resistance of pathogens presents an increasing global threat resulting in millions of deaths each year. One of the main reasons for the increasing number of resistant pathogens is not-optimal application of the antibiotics. Targeted narrow-spectrum antibiotic application is preferable, but current manual resistance tests are laborious while available automatic tests evaluate a limited number of antibiotics. The EU-funded BacterOMIC project is developing a fully automated antimicrobial susceptibility testing system for rapid (under 4 hours) identification of efficient antibiotics from the set of all those commonly available for the treatment of certain pathogens. Importantly, the new system allows identification of a combination of several antibiotics for the most efficient treatment of infection. The project involves international collaboration within the EU and the phase 2 current goal is to optimise the instrumental design and validate the system in clinical trials for future commercialisation.
Objective
In the recent years, we have seen a drastic increase in the antibiotic resistance among bacterial pathogens. This is considered as one of the biggest threats to global health in the current era. The reason for that is inappropriate use of antibiotics - patients are often treated with not optimal antibiotic that need to be changed after few days. Number of resistant microorganisms constantly elevates due to inappropriate use of antibiotics - patients are often treated with inappropriate drugs that need to be changed after few days if bacteria turns to be resistant. The reason for that is that current manual antibiotic resistance tests are time-consuming and laborious, while automatic antimicrobial tests offer analysis of a short lists of antibiotics.
BacterOMIC is a response to the growing global threat of antibiotic resistance. We provide the first fully comprehensive rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) system to determine already in 4h which from all common antibiotics will be most successful in treating certain bacterial infection. Unlike current methods, our system also allows to investigate antimicrobial effect of not only single antibiotics but also combinations of multiple antibiotics – the future of infection disease treatment.
Constantly growing antimicrobial susceptibility testing market was valued at EUR 2.4 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach EUR 3.1 billion by 2022 at the CAGR of 5.1%. With our clear business model we target pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, hospitals/private healthcare centers, and diagnostic laboratories. We have a network of partnerships across the EU (PL, FR, ES, CH, DE, and PT) and we are ready for rapid scale-up, with more than 30 million cumulative profit by 2025. We need SME Instrument phase 2 to optimize the design, prepare for mass production, validate the system in clinical trials, and certify it for successful commercialization.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesmicrobiologybacteriology
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug resistanceantibiotic resistance
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
01 796 Warsaw
Poland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.