BioAmp Diagnostics develops tests to flag resistance before antibiotics are chosen
BioAmp Diagnostics is developing a urine test intended to give clinicians resistance information before they choose an antibiotic for a complicated urinary tract infection. Its approach addresses a difficult timing problem: treatment may begin before conventional testing has established which drugs the bacteria can resist.
A resistance signal for the first prescription
Complicated urinary tract infections include infections beyond the bladder, such as kidney infections. Clinicians may start treatment empirically, using available information before laboratory results are ready. BioAmp's proposed test aims to add a resistance signal to that initial decision, when a clinician could still choose a different antibiotic.
The company's platform, DETECT, stands for Dual-Enzyme Trigger-Enabled Cascade Technology. In the research assay, an enzyme associated with resistance activates a chemical probe. A second enzyme then amplifies the reaction into a measurable color signal.
What the early research showed
Researchers tested an assay using 472 urine samples submitted for culture to an Oakland hospital laboratory over 11 days in 2018. It detected 10 of 11 samples containing clinically significant concentrations of bacteria producing the targeted CTX-M resistance enzyme, compared with laboratory reference methods. Its specificity was 97.6%: that is, 97.6% of samples classified as negative by the reference methods tested negative. The assay took 30 minutes and used a laboratory plate reader.
