Rapid Micro Biosystems, a leading provider of automated, non-destructive, rapid microbial detection, today announced the exercise of the second year contract option by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the development of rapid sterility testing for vaccines as part of BARDA's Science and Technology Platforms Applied to the Medical Countermeasure (MCM) Development program.
Rapid Micro Biosystems will receive $2.1 million for the second contract year. The second contract year runs through Q3 2012 with a final option available for funding a third contract year at $2.4 million.
"We are excited to continue our relationship with BARDA," said Steve Delity, Chief Executive Officer of Rapid Micro Biosystems. "Rapid Micro is the leader in automated rapid detection, and we have made great strides in our ongoing development of a solution to help with pandemic response."
"The development of the rapid sterility products is progressing very well," said Sarath Krishnaswamy, Vice President of Research & Development. "Using our unique detection technology, we already have exciting test results that start to show contamination detection within hours and provide final enumeration results in 50% of the time of the traditional 14 day test."
Reducing the time-to-release of vaccines or other biopharmaceutical countermeasures will facilitate the prevention and control of epidemic diseases like influenza, other emerging infections and agents of bioterrorism. Faster microbiological quality control (QC) testing will reduce the release cycle of vaccines by as much as two to four weeks.