CARB-X to fund development of rapid diagnostic test
CARB-X today announced an award of up to $6.8 million to Pattern Bioscience of Austin, Texas, to develop a rapid identification and antimicrobial susceptibility test (ID/AST) for drug-resistant pathogens.
According to a press release from CARB-X (the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator), Pattern's diagnostic test combines single cell analysis with deep learning and aims to provide pathogen identification and susceptibility results within 4 hours.
"Currently, it can take days of laboratory testing to diagnose a lethal bacterial infection," said Erin Duffy, chief of research and development at CARB-X. "Faster ID/AST results, like Pattern's diagnostic, if successful and eventually approved for use in patients, would enable medical staff to treat infections quickly with appropriate antibiotics."
If the project successfully achieves certain development milestones, Pattern will be eligible for up to an additional $15.1 million in funding from CARB-X.
Feb 4 CARB-X press release
Researchers say antibiotic resistance microbiomes of mouth, gut differ
The antimicrobial resistance microbiome (the resistome) in a person's mouth appears to differ from that person's gut resistome, a study today in Nature Communications found.
A resistome is a community of antimicrobial-resistant microbes, including their various resistance genes.
Researchers from King's College London analyzed data on saliva, dental plaque, and other oral microbiomes from 788 people using the Comprehensive Antibiotic Resistance Database (CARD) and compared them with resistomes found in the stomach and intestines. The patients were from Asia, Pacific, European, and US sites.
The investigators found that the mouth harbored unique resistome profiles compared with the gut. And although the antimicrobial resistance genes in the mouth were less diverse, they were more pervasive across the populations studied.
In a King's College news release, study co-author David Moyes asks, "If body sites have different resistomes, can a gut resistome represent the entirety of the human resistome? We must continue analysis of the microbiomes at other body sites to realise the huge potential for unlocking insights from open-source datasets of previously sampled cohorts."
Feb 4 Nat Commun study
Feb 4 King's College London news release