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 eQUANT™ system and technology in Scientific Reports.

The eQUANT™ - 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 eQUANT™ 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 eQUANT™, 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.

"eQUANT™ 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 eQUANT™ 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 eQUANT™
Avails eQUANT™ 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. eQUANT™ will enable legacy AST systems to be used directly from PBC. In addition eQUANT™ will also allow for direct-from-PBC disk diffusion. The eQUANT™ 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 

Contacts:
[email protected]

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. www.availsmedical.com

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SOURCE Avails Medical, Inc.