MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, June 2, 2020 – Specific Diagnostics today announces that the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) has awarded a second major grant to drive the commercial introduction of Specific’s Reveal system, which provides quantitative determination of antibiotic efficacy within hours of positive blood culture, with minimal sample preparation and at a low cost. The Reveal antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) system offers phenotypic MIC matching CLSI gold standard results within an average of 5 hours from positive blood sample, while greatly simplifying workflow, at a cost low enough to prompt widespread adoption.
The new technology, developed for use directly with positive blood culture samples (it does not require removal of red blood cells), is equally suited for use with dilutions obtained from colonies, making it a candidate replacement platform for legacy systems in modern microbiology laboratories.
The distinguished NIAID grant Reviewers found that “The high biomedical significance and public health impact of the proposed project is in its potential to provide novel, rapid, and improved phenotypic diagnostic platform for AST that can create a paradigm shift in management of patients and healthcare providers in hospital, especially for bloodstream infections.”
“We are honored to receive the continuing support of NIAID, which has already been instrumental for our development of an inexpensive, rapid, simple and robust system to determine antibiotic susceptibility for bloodstream infection,” said Specific CEO Paul A. Rhodes, Ph.D. “With NIAID’s support, and now the commercial investment of major private equity and global strategic partners, we will soon offer a best-in-class rapid phenotypic susceptibility testing system to leading microbiology laboratories. We are grateful for the confidence and look forward to the commercialization of the Reveal system.”
“These new developments and our most recent grant award further demonstrate the broad and disruptive capabilities of our underlying technology for microbiology diagnostics,” said Specific COO Raymond Martino. “We are developing a truly novel diagnostic paradigm, based on the use of low cost printed volatile sensors that very sensitively detect microbial growth. The Reveal system will be available in Europe in the coming months, and we believe will rapidly make an impact on clinical best practice for bacteremia and other time-sensitive infections.”
About Specific
Specific Diagnostics has developed in vitro diagnostic systems based upon a unique, patented metabolomic signature technology that enables rapid identification of microorganisms. Its first commercial application applies this fundamental new platform to the rapid determination of antimicrobial susceptibility directly from positive blood cultures, as well as isolate dilutions. Specific is based in Mountain View, CA.
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