NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – CLC bio has been awarded a $2 million grant from the European Union to develop a software platform to support a multi-partner project using next-generation sequencing to identify infections, the company said today.
The goal of the $10 million Pathseek project, led by University College London, seeks to demonstrate the use of next-gen sequencing in clinical microbiology labs to detect pathogens directly from samples and to detect drug -resistant mutations. The Pathseek project focuses on infections that are considered a global risk, such as HIV, mycobacterium tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, and influenza A, and it will research two host pharmacogenomic biomarkers that predict responses to HCV and HIV.
For its part, CLC bio will use the funding to develop a user-friendly and efficient solution for pathogen detection, host biomarker identification, pathogen variant characterization, and molecular epidemiology, in a clinical setting.
"Current platforms in diagnostic laboratories are limited by the amount of time required for generating a result and by the limited sequence information available for pathogens," CLC bio VP of R&D Roald Forsberg said in a statement. "To overcome these limitations we're going to develop a disruptive diagnostic technological pathogen sequencing platform which utilizes our world-leading bioinformatics expertise to enable scientists to go from a patient sample to a result, in less than 48 hours."
Other partners in the three-year project include Erasmus University Medical Center and Oxford Gene Technology.