Israeli company MeMed announced today that it has been awarded a contract by US Department of Defense's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The $9.2 million deal will fund the completion of MeMed’s pioneering point of care platform for distinguishing bacterial from viral infections.
MeMed CEO Dr. Eran Eden said, "We are excited by this vote of confidence. DTRA’s recognition of our work further positions MeMed as a world leader in immune-based diagnostics of infectious diseases. This joint effort, and our growing collaboration with other international stakeholders from industry and government, will facilitate the global availability of our tests aimed at combating antimicrobial resistance."
Chosen as one of "Globes" most promising startups in 2016, MeMed is a novel assay that accurately distinguishes between bacterial and viral infections based on the patient immune response to different infection types thus reducing use of unnecessary antibiotics. Founded in 2009, the company is based in Tirat Hacarmel.
In the past eight years, company cofounders Dr. Kfir Oved and Eden have collaborated with leading researchers and clinicians from around the globe to study the changes that take place in the human immune system when it is fighting infections, in order to develop a human immune signature that accurately recognizes the difference between bacterial and viral infections. ImmunoXpert, the first generation of this novel test, is already in use and has been validated in thousands of patients. The second generation of the test involved development of a new point of care platform that is easy to use and takes only 15 minutes.
Oved said, "This collaboration will allow us to expedite completion of our point of care platform program. In addition to allowing measurements of our bacterial versus viral test within minutes, the new platform also opens the way to a variety of rapid multiplex-protein measurements at the point of care with lab-quality precision, which has broad applications."
"The project will also evaluate and expand our test menu to detect early infections, even at the pre-symptomatic stage of a disease - currently a major challenge in our ability to control infections and epidemics", said Dr. Tanya Gottlieb MeMed’s VP Scientific Affairs.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 19, 2017
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