Date: 2015-03-26
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: multiplex real-time PCR assay for rapid detection of bloodstream infections
Company: Biocartis (Belgium) Microbiome (The Netherlands)
Therapeutic area: Diagnostic - Infectious diseases
Type agreement: collaboration licensing
Action mechanism:
Disease: bloodstream infections
Details: * On March 26, 2015, Biocartis, an innovative molecular diagnostics company, and Microbiome, a spin-off of the VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, announced to have entered into a worldwide license and collaboration agreement for the development of an integrated multiplex real-time PCR assay for rapid detection of bloodstream infections. Under the terms of the collaboration and license agreement, Microbiome’s multiplex PCR assay for identification of sepsis-causing microorganisms will be further developed as an integrated multiplex real-time PCR assay on Biocartis’ Idylla™ platform for use in conjunction with a new platform under development by Biocartis, called Idylla™-Enrich. Idylla™-Enrich is a dedicated pre-enrichment platform for bloodstream infections. The Idylla™-Enrich method has extensively been tested as part of the largest sepsis study in Europe to date comprising almost 7,500 clinical samples.Biocartis will further develop the platform and plans to launch it for use in conjunction with the pathogen identification test licensed from Microbiome as a streamlined solution for the diagnosis of bloodstream infections. There is evidence that a delay in the treatment of a patient with sepsis increases mortality by 7.6% per hour in the first six hours[4]. These figures call for a faster and more accurate diagnosis. When diagnosing sepsis or bloodstream infections, typically a blood sample of the patient is analyzed for the presence of pathogens. Today’s gold standard approach to detect the pathogens is blood culture which typically takes 24-48 hours for bacteria and even 5 days for fungi, which considerably delays a targeted therapy and contributes to high sepsis mortality. By combining the enrichment with a multiplex PCR assay on the Idylla™ platform it is possible to identify pathogens in bloodstream infections much faster, reducing current approaches of 24-48 hours to as little as 2 hours.
Financial terms: Financial details of the agreement are not disclosed.
Latest news:
