NEW YORK – T2 Biosystems announced late Thursday that it will exercise a $4.4 million contract option with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
The initial contract was awarded in 2019 and BARDA exercised the first option, valued at $10.5 million, in September 2020 and a second option of $6.4 million in 2021. The total potential BARDA funding if all contract options are exercised is $69.0 million.
The additional funding will be used to advance the clinical trials for the T2Biothreat Panel and T2Resistance Panel, as well as to advance the development of the company's comprehensive panel for the detection of bloodstream infections and antimicrobial resistance, and its next-generation instrument.
"The products being developed and advanced toward commercialization have the potential to transform the detection of sepsis-causing pathogens, reduce the threat of antimicrobial resistance, and protect the nation from biothreat pathogens," T2 Chairman and CEO John Sperzel said in a statement.
The T2Biothreat Panel detects the biothreat pathogens Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Yersinia pestis, and Rickettsia prowazekii. The T2Resistance Panel detects 13 antibiotic resistance genes from both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial pathogens. Both panels test directly from blood using the T2Dx instrument.
The firm's next-generation instrument is a fully automated, random-access, high-throughput system. It has been designed in parallel with the comprehensive panel for the detection of bloodstream infections and antimicrobial resistance from a single whole-blood sample.
The firm's comprehensive panel detects more than 95 percent of bloodstream infections caused by bacterial and Candida pathogens, as well as antibiotic resistance markers, in a single test with a time to result of approximately three hours.