Az. Firm to Partner with CDC on Biothreats
Dec. 16--Tucson-based Accelerate Diagnostics, Inc. has entered into a collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop rapid testing for antibiotic-resistant biological threats.
Accelerate's patented system has previously been used for quick identification of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and drugs that are most effective in treating them.
As part of a collaboration with the CDC announced last month, Accelerate will be developing tests for identification of specific bacterial biothreat agents, such as anthrax and plague.
Conventional testing methods available in hospital and public health labs can take up to several days to produce results, but Accelerate says its culture-free testing method reduces diagnostic time to several hours.
"Early detection of highly infectious bacteria, including biothreat agents, and determination of their susceptibility to specific antibiotics are essential for patient management and protection of public health," said Accelerate CEO Larry Mehren in a press release.
For its part in the collaboration, the CDC will provide scientific expertise on the microbiology and molecular biology of biothreat agents, as well as evaluate the performance of Accelerate's platform in its collection of biothreat agents.
As part of the agreement, the CDC purchased one of Accelerate's ID/AST instruments for use in its lab.
"The CDC is looking for new technology to deploy to look for resistance in biothreat agents," said Joen Johansen, Accelerate's head of marketing. "It's really a validation of Accelerate's work that the CDC has decided to use this platform."
Although the Ebola crisis has occupied much of the CDC's time and resources this year, Johansen said that's not a factor in this collaboration, since Accelerate's system detects bacteria and Ebola is a virus.
"The CDC is always thinking about potential threats that tend to happen more than Ebola," Johansen said. "These types of bacterial biothreats are already around, and people who come into the hospital infected with them need to be quickly identified."
Caitlin Schmidt is a NASA Space Grant intern at the University of Arizona and the Star. Contact her at cschmidt@tucson.com
Copyright 2014 - The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson
