NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The National Institutes of Health has awarded Denver Health Medical Center and Accelerate Diagnostics a five-year, $5 million grant to develop a test for detecting common bacteria directly from blood, the company announced on Friday.
The test will also be developed to detect antibiotic resistance and to provide results in less than three hours. The initial focus of the project will be on carbepenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, the partners said.
Accelerate's ID/AST System will be used for the study. Combining rapid genomic identification and high-speed phenotypic susceptibility, the platform can extract single bacteria cells from a patient's blood. Accelerate noted that current methods can take up to three days to grow a bacterial sample and to test which antibiotics are effective.
Its CEO Lawrence Mehren recently said that Accelerate plans to launch its platform in Europe this year and to start clinical trials for the system in preparation of a 510(k) submission to the US Food and Drug Administration.