Curetis bags EIB debt financing and expands

CEO Oliver Schacht said that Curetis will use the growth capital loan to „accelerate our R&D activities and develop a broader pipeline of applications for our Unyvero platform.“ Using a variety of cartridges, diseases such as pneumonia (Unyvero P55) implant and tissue infections  (Unyvero ITI) and blood infections (Unyvero BCU) in hospitalised patients can be diagnosed by the company’s properietary multiplex PCR testing platform within just 4-5 hours following pre-culture.

Currently the company, which raised €44.3m in an IPO on Euronext Amsterdam, is marketing several cartridges including CE-marked 2nd generation Unyvero P55 and Unyvero ITI Cartridges and a CE-marked Unyvero BCU Blood Culture Cartridge. While blood-culture-dependent analyses of microbial pathogen take at least 48 hours, according to Schacht, „our Univero BCU Cartridge identifies 100 diagnostic targets within 4-5 hours“ with a few minutes hands-on time. Identification of 87 Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, mycobacteria and 16 antibiotic resistance gene markers can help doctors select the best therapy for sepsis patients. In collaboration with Acumen Research Labs, Curetis is additionally developing a Sepsis Host Response test that measures mRNA expression markers from white blood cells.

The EIB financing comes at a time, when Curetis is  set to broaden its product pipeline. The company said it has acquired the real-time qPCR-based Gyronimo Platform from Carpegen GmbH and Systec GmbH. It paid a €5m upfront fee in cash, milestones up to €2.5m and  royalties of up to €9m. Gyronimo allows to Curetis to transform Unyvero into a uniquely broad platform offering rapid testing for 10-30 diagnostic targets in addition to its existing multiplex testing platform. "We ll be able to offer low plex, medium plex and high plex diagnostics in the future", Schacht told European Biotechnology.

Furthermore, Curetis said, the EIB funds will allow the validation of other complementary technology assets and corresponding IP and the funding of clinical trials. Most recently, Curetis reported 90.2% sensitivity and 99.3% specificity for Unyvero LRT Lower Respiratory Tract panel in a US FDA trial. In addition, the funds will support the integration of the GEnetic Antibiotic Resistance and Susceptibility NGS database (GEAR) including the genetic information of more than 11,000 bacteria, which was acquired from Siemens this autumn. 

EIB Vice President Ambroise Fayolle stressed: “This investment will contribute to accelerating the development and market launch of new diagnostics tests, helping to improve the diagnosis and survival rates of critically ill patients in Europe as well as to counteract increasing antibiotic resistance.”