NEW YORK – DeepUll announced on Tuesday that it has entered into a €20 million ($21.3 million) loan agreement with the European Investment Bank.
The venture loan will be used to finance research, development, and investigation activities for DeepUll's culture-free diagnostics platform for the early identification of sepsis and other acute infections. The funding will allow the company to further develop its automated device, DeepUll said in a statement.
The loan is financed under the Infectious Diseases Finance Facility, part of Horizon 2020, the EU's research and innovation program, and the financing package is "tailor-made to the needs of DeepUll," the firm said. In October, DeepUll raised €13 million in a Series B funding round.
DeepUll's PCR-based platform is designed to detect more than 250 different pathogens and about 15 resistance genes in one hour from a whole blood sample. It can also generate phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility results in about eight hours without the need for a positive blood culture. Barcelona, Spain-based DeepUll said the product will be a desktop system with end-to-end automation that can be placed in any clinical setting and that it will use artificial intelligence for medical decision support.
"We believe our product has tremendous potential in rapidly improving patient outcomes and streamlining hospital processes in order to identify at-risk patients as early as possible and provide support for treatment decisions," DeepUll CEO Jordi Carrera said in a statement.