The cooperative agreement will see Noscendo, a bioinformatic solutions developer, work with scientists of the One Health Working Group at the Institute for Hygiene and Public Health of the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) in Germany, with an aim to expand the company’s diagnostic platform, known as Disqver.
Upon completion of the expansion, Noscendo plans to enable molecular characterization of up to 8,000 antibiotic-resistant pathogens from over 35 species using ‘the latest sequencing technology’, according to the company.
In order to support the expansion, the company will leverage the institute’s ‘continually growing’ strain bank and its environmental databank, which is “fed from various national and international projects,” Noscendo stated.
Asked about the technical part of the collaborative work, Philip Stevens, Noscendo’s CEO, told us that UKB will provide isolates of clinically relevant microbes, which will be sequenced by Noscendo “using [the] newest sequencing technologies.”
The company’s CEO also told us that the joint work has already started, with the first results expected “after some time of validation and further data generation.”
Ricarda Schmithausen, head of the One Health Working Group, which is investigating the spread of antibiotic-resistant germs, explained that the number of bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics “has risen sharply in recent years, not only in healthcare facilities but also in the environment.”
“If we can identify the pathogen and its resistances quickly, we can initiate targeted hygiene measures and antibiotic treatments,” she added.
According to Noscendo, the Disqver platform has already enabled attribution of ‘various’ outbreak events and incidents to specific ‘bacterial culprits’, such as that of a patient with the pathogen klebsiella pneumoniae, resistant against four groups of antibiotics, detected in his respiratory system.
