Project description
Novel rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing for bacterial sepsis
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that develops as a reaction to infection with millions of cases and deaths worldwide. Patients with sepsis require emergency antibiotic therapy to prevent disease progression and reduce mortality. The current standard antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) takes too long to be efficient in sepsis cases. Swiss Resistell AG developed a breakthrough AST technology that delivers diagnostic results in less than 2 h instead of the current 24-48 h. The EU-funded RAPID-SEP-AST project will accelerate commercialization and support final market-critical proof of efficiency through a multicentre performance evaluation study. It will ultimately allow the rapid introduction of this testing in Europe and then globally through leading global distributors.
Objective
SEPSIS is a life-threatening reaction to infection with 48.9 million cases and 11 million deaths worldwide, 700.000 of those in the EU yearly. In epidemic-like situations such as COVID-19, SEPSIS is prevalent in >60% of the admitted patients and all non-survivors had SEPSIS. SEPSIS patients require immediate antibiotic therapy to prevent disease progression and reduce mortality. Therefore, clinicians administer empirically broad-spectrum antibiotics, which save lives but also lead to inappropriate treatments in up to 40% of cases. To identify the best antibiotic and dosage for each patient, clinicians in Acute Care and ICUs need to run diagnostics to identify both the pathogen causing the infection but test several antibiotics to find the specifically treating the infection. Antibiotic susceptibility testing takes too long to be useful in SEPSIS cases. Resistell, a Deep-Tech SME, has a breakthrough AST technology delivers AST diagnostic results in less than 2h instead of the current 24-48h. Clinicians around the world using RAPID-SEP-AST will for the first time select personalised antibiotic therapies to SEPSIS patients in the same day, increasing the success rate of treatment and reducing hospitalisation time and costs. This EIC project will accelerate RAPID-SEP-AST industrialisation, finalise CE-IVD approval and support market-critical proof of efficiency in a multicentre performance evaluation study at KOLs. RAPID-SEP-AST will allow rapid Resistell scale-up first in Europe using its strong network of EU distributors and then globally through leading global distributors. Resistell’s is a Women-Led Company (Danuta Cichocka CEO) with a strong cross-functional team of engineers, microbiologists, data scientists and serial entrepreneurs, supported by experienced Board of Directors and Scientific Advisors.
Fields of science
- social sciencessociologydemographymortality
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managemententrepreneurship
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusescoronaviruses
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugsantibiotics
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME - SME instrumentCoordinator
4132 Muttenz
Switzerland
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.