NEW YORK – Boston-based startup Day Zero Diagnostics said today that it has received a $224,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease.
According to DZD, the award will help fund the development of its "ksim" algorithm, which automates the determination of infection relatedness in suspected hospital-acquired infection (HAI) outbreaks. DZD said that the algorithm, which will eventually power the firm's epiXact service, quickly processes whole-genome sequencing data without requiring manual analysis.
As part of the Phase I grant, DZD will continue developing and validating the ksim algorithm using data from published hospital outbreaks, a large hospital dataset, and data from the epiXact service.
"Our goal is to leverage ksim's precision, speed, and computational efficiency to enhance and expand our recently launched epiXact service for investigating suspected HAI outbreaks," DZD CEO and Cofounder Jong Lee said in a statement. "Additionally, ksim will enable transformational strategies for outbreak detection and intervention that are not currently possible because it allows the automated processing of large datasets in real time."
The award follows DZD's $8.6 million Series A funding round led by Triventures in January.