The 240-bottle instrument can simultaneously determine the Gram status and ID of a sample directly in the blood culture bottle in roughly the time it takes current methodologies to only detect the presence of infection. The disposable CSA changes color based on the unique volatile metabolites that a microorganism emits. By obtaining the "fingerprint" of the bacteria during incubation, the system provides ID hands-free, improving workflow while reducing costs and speeding time-to-action, saving patient lives. "This system is the product of years of development by the Specific team," said Paul A. Rhodes, Ph.D., CEO of Specific. "We are looking forward to introducing our first commercial offering to the market, and to sharing news of more transformative products, including our innovative new AST system, which will be introduced at ECCMID."
Sepsis, the byproduct of blood infection, is the number one killer in hospitals, killing more patients than breast cancer, prostate cancer and AIDS combined and costing the healthcare industry over $20 billion to manage. Lives are lost due to slow methodologies requiring many stages of technician involvement. Specific provides a rapid, accurate, automated new alternative paradigm to accelerate results, enabling physicians around the globe to more effectively manage patients.
Specific and its founders have written almost 60 peer-reviewed publications, detailing the successful demonstration of the CSA technology. The Company itself has independently authored over 20 scientific publications and conference abstracts regarding the CSA-powered detection and ID instrument and antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) system.
Specific will be showcasing two abstracts at ECCMID 2017, one detailing data demonstrating that our novel antibiotic susceptibility testing system provides MIC directly from positive blood culture in 3 hours, with the second reporting a novel and unique CRE signature of E coli which emerges during primary culture. Both capabilities are of significant clinical importance, and will be presented to the field for the first time at ECCMID. Check out "SpecifAST: rapid, low cost and automatable MIC determination directly from positive blood culture" at P0181 from 15:30 – 16:30 on Saturday, 22 April and "A signature of carbapenem resistance observable during growth of Escherichia coli in spiked blood culture obtained with a colorimetric sensor array" at P1575 from 13:30 – 14:30 on Monday, 24 April.
About the rapID DxTM System
During culture, microorganisms produce volatile metabolites unique to each species and in some cases to their strain. Utilizing an inexpensive printed chemical sensor array to obtain a fingerprint that combines detection and identification into a simple, automated single step, the novel rapID DxTM system identifies microorganism from a phenotypic metabolomic signature obtained during growth.