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Avails Medical’s eQUANT paper ‘Novel electronic biosensor for automated inoculum preparation to accelerate antimicrobial susceptibility testing’ published in Scientific Reports

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 1, 2021 /PRNewswire/ – Avails Medical, a pioneer in rapid, automated and fully electrical antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) announced today the publication of a new peer-reviewed paper on its eQUANTTM system and technology in Scientific Reports.

The eQUANTTM – a novel instrument utilizing electrical biosensors – produces a standardized inoculum equivalent to a 0.5 McFarland directly from positive blood cultures. The proof-of-concept study demonstrates that eQUANTTM inocula prepared from clinically significant species of Enterobacterales were comparable to 0.5 McFarland inocula generated from bacterial colonies in both CFU/ml concentration and performance in antimicrobial susceptibility testing, with ≧95% essential and categorical agreement for VITEK2 and disk diffusion. The eQUANTTM, combined with a rapid, direct from positive blood culture identification technique, can allow the clinical laboratory to begin antimicrobial susceptibility testing using a standardized inoculum approximately 2-3 hours after a blood culture flags positive. This has the potential to improve clinical practice by accelerating conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing and the resulting targeted antibiotic therapy.

“eQUANTTM will eliminate the current need for time consuming 18-24 hour bacterial Petri dish cultures and enable standard AST to be initiated one day earlier”, said Meike Herget, PhD, CTO of Avails Medical.

“Accelerating antibiotic susceptibility testing for blood stream infections is key to reduce patient mortality and to de-escalate antibiotic therapy from a costly broad spectrum and empiric one to a targeted and lower cost therapy. With eQUANTTM we are addressing the holy grail of timely blood stream infection diagnosis by allowing AST directly from a patient positive blood culture, saving time and lives. We are excited to be providing clinical laboratories with a simple though powerful new device that will fit seamlessly within a clinical lab’s workflow and enable timely and highly accurate AST results. Avails will be challenging the technology in our upcoming clinical study trials”, said Dr. Herget.

About eQUANTTM

Avails eQUANTTM technology will enable a single-step automated 0.5 McFarland preparation (in as fast as 40 minutes) directly from positive blood culture (PBC), removing 18+ hours from workflow by eliminating the need for subcultures. eQUANTTM will enable legacy AST systems to be used directly from PBC. In addition eQUANTTM will also allow for direct-from-PBC disk diffusion. The eQUANTTM system is currently being evaluated in clinical studies.

Citation

Putney, S., Theiss, A.H., Rajan, N.K. et al. Novel electronic biosensor for automated inoculum preparation to accelerate antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Sci Rep 11, 11360 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90830-2

About Avails Medical Inc.

Avails Medical, Inc., a privately held company, was founded in 2013 to help fight one of today’s biggest global health threats – antibiotic resistance. Founded by a team of Stanford University alums, the Avails all-electrical technology platform is designed to significantly reduce the amount of time required to obtain the reliable antibiotic susceptibility data required to enable accurate therapy decisions. Avails’ electronic biosensor technology is designed to improve speed and accuracy in pathogen quantification and susceptibility testing directly from human specimens by eliminating crude, time-consuming culturing steps.

CONTACT:
Avails Medical
press@availsmedical.com