NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Talis Biomedical announced today it has been awarded a five-year grant for up to $5.6 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The funding will support development of a point-of-care system enabling enrichment, identification, and phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing of pathogens directly from whole blood.
The Talis system uses proprietary isothermal amplification chemistries, data science tools, and SlipChip technology which performs digital processing of thousands of nanoliter-volume chambers in parallel. The diagnostic test for bloodstream infections and antibiotic susceptibility will take approximately two hours, the firm said in a statement.
"This award from the NIH provides Talis a unique opportunity to create a new paradigm in diagnosis and treatment of bloodstream infections directly from clinical samples at the point of care," said Brian Coe, chief executive officer of Talis. "We believe that through these research efforts we will have the opportunity to save countless lives and to substantially reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance," he said.
Talis was awarded $4.4 million in funding from CARB-X last month for a 20-minute, CLIA-waived molecular diagnostic test for detecting chlamydia and gonorrhea directly from a patient's sample.