NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Swedish biotech firm Symcel announced today that it has received a €3.5 million ($4.1 million) grant to clinically validate its calScreener cell analysis system for use in antibiotic susceptibility testing.
CalScreener is designed to provide real-time cellular bioenergetic measurements using calorimetry, which relies on heat to measure metabolic and physical changes.
With the funding — which is being provided under the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework program — Symcel aims to test whether the system can identify which antibiotics are effective against multidrug-resistant bacteria in sepsis patients. The project is expected to take 28 months, and will include collaborators from the Karolinska Institutet, Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal, Careggi University Hospital, Rigshospitalet, and The Swedish Institute for Health Economics.
"The goal is to provide a diagnostic tool with high speed, specificity, and sensitivity in a smartly designed and packaged device with the tools available to perform multiple antibiotic susceptibility testing in a hospital setting," Symcel CSO Magnus Jansson said in a statement.