Sandoz’ antiinfectives partner Ares Genetics gets fund

The subsidiary of Curetis announced to use a new €1.3m fund provided by Vienna Business Agency to develop a prototype solution for the rapid, NGS-based diagnosis of bacterial pathogens and  antibiotic resistances for patients suffering from severe infections within the 2.5-year TRIPLE-A (Assay Development and Artificial Intelligence to Diagnose Antibiotic Resistant Infections) development project. Vienna Business Agency also supports the ARES&CO Pharma Partnering Programme, under which Ares Genetics partnered with Sandoz in mid-December to develop a digital anti-infectives platform.

Ares Genetics' platform combines NGS technology with a proprietary, artificial intelligence (“AI”)-curated genetic pathogen and antibiotic resistance (“AMR”) reference database, ARESdb, for result interpretation with a reliability over 98%.In September 2018, the company initiated the development of the ARESupa (Universal Pathogenome Assay), a single diagnostic test designed to detect any pathogen and associated drug resistances from any native patient sample. Under the TRIPLE-A project, the company aims to develop a laboratory prototype of the universal pathogenome assay at ARESlab, a dedicated R&D and diagnostic service laboratory currently set up in Vienna, Austria, for in-house test development and initial commercialisation in Europe.   

“With ARESdb effectively linking genetic biomarkers to antibiotic resistance and the further advancement of NGS technology, we believe that our approach is well suited as a next generation diagnostic solution to tackle microbial infections and AMR [antimicrobial resistance] as one of the biggest healthcare threats of the 21st century,” said Dr. Andreas Posch, Managing Director & CEO of Ares Genetics.

Microbial infections and antibiotic resistances have become a major healthcare challenge with 30,000 deaths in Europe and 25,000 deaths in the US annually. In March 2019, high-ranking international experts will gather at 12^th Berlin Conference on Life Sciences to discuss the latest diagnostic and therapeutic progress in fighting AMR and to discuss pull mechanisms that provide an incentive to develop novel antibiotics.