Funding Aims to Reduce Antibiotic Misuse in Hospitals
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MeMed Ltd. announced today that the European Commission awarded €2.3 million to support AutoPilot-Dx, an international consortium with members from leading medical centers and industry that is coordinating the deployment of ImmunoXpert™ in Europe. The two-year award was granted through the prestigious Horizon 2020 Fast Track to Innovation Pilot, which recognizes outstanding business innovators.
"We are excited by the continued vote of confidence of the European Commission,” said Eran Eden, PhD, CEO of MeMed. “This award will allow us to strengthen our collaboration with clinical key opinion leaders and industry partners, with the goal of further solidifying the clinical utility and cost effectiveness of ImmunoXpert™ in reducing antibiotic misuse.”
Bacterial and viral infections are often clinically indistinguishable, leading to antibiotic overuse. This promotes the spread of drug-resistant bacteria – one of the leading global healthcare challenges of our time. As part of the solution, ImmunoXpert™ is an innovative diagnostic test that uses the body’s own immune system to accurately distinguish between bacterial and viral infections, thereby empowering physicians to make better informed antibiotic treatment decisions. ImmunoXpert™ has been validated in a series of clinical studies enrolling thousands of patients worldwide, is regulatory cleared for use in Europe (CE-IVD), and is currently in use in select centers of excellence.
"This award complements two previous highly competitive grants of over €9 million received from the European Commission, including the 2015 Small and Medium-sized Enterprise instrument awarded to support the development of ImmunoPoC™, our second-generation product for rapid point-of-care testing," said Dr. Kfir Oved, CTO of MeMed. The new grant will facilitate introduction of ImmunoXpert™ at additional leading medical centers, with the goal of monitoring the management of 1,200 children with respiratory tract infections (RTI) or fever without source, in a collaboration between University of Milan, University Hospital Mannheim, Tecan, Quantify Research, and MeMed.
In children, RTIs account for almost 50% of doctor visits and hospitalizations, with unexplained fever responsible for as much as 25% of pediatric ED visits. "A key intervention for reducing antibiotic overuse in respiratory infections is development and adoption of improved diagnostics," says Prof. Susanna Esposito, pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Milan and President of the World Association for Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders. "The EU grant will help us to further validate an innovative diagnostic to push the boundaries of the field."
Prof. Tobias Tenenbaum, Head of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Pulmonology Unit at the University Hospital Mannheim, states, "We welcome the opportunity to further evaluate the impact of ImmunoXpert™ on the management of febrile children in real working conditions."
