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CARB-X Awards GenomeKey Up to $9.5M to Develop Rapid Diagnostic Test for Sepsis

NEW YORK – Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, or CARB-X, announced on Tuesday that it will provide British infectious disease diagnostics company GenomeKey up to $3 million in non-dilutive funding to develop a rapid diagnostic test for sepsis.

The Bristol, UK-based company will be eligible for up to $6.5 million in additional funding if the project achieves certain milestones, CARB-X said in a statement. GenomeKey's new test would deliver results on bacteria that are causing an infection and which antibiotics would be most effective in four hours rather than the current standard of days.

"The technology GenomeKey is building will enable clinicians to diagnose and treat sepsis faster and reduce unnecessary antibiotic consumption," GenomeKey CEO Michael Roberts said in a statement. "Sepsis can kill within hours, and yet the gold standard test for this disease currently takes days."

GenomeKey's test would determine the presence of bacteria from blood, identify the species of bacteria, and determine antibacterial susceptibility. Its technology "combines innovative methods to separate bacterial DNA from human DNA in whole blood, next-generation DNA sequencing, and innovative machine learning to interpret the antimicrobial susceptibility of the bacterial DNA," CARB-X said.

International nonprofit CARB-X was founded in 2016 to support the early development of antibiotics, vaccines, and rapid diagnostics for antibiotic resistance.

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