FASTinov, a CINTESIS-born company that holds the U.Porto spin-off brand awarded by the U.Porto Innovation, has just filed a patent for a disruptive technology that makes it possible to detect antibiotic resistance in record time.
The patent had already been accepted in the United States of America and later in Europe. Now the company has its doors open in Japan, a highly technological and competitive market.
According to the company’s CSO, Cidália Pina-Vaz, “This patent describes a new and faster method for assessing susceptibility to antibiotics from a sample of biological material such as blood or urine. The microorganisms are incubated for one hour with the antibiotics, and a fluorescent substance is added to reveal the lesion produced. In less than two hours, we can report which antibiotics the bacterium is susceptible to and, in case of resistance, what is the underlying resistance mechanism”.
The development of this new technology is part of a work funded with 2.6 million euros by the European Commission, which has been widely publicized for its disruptive character. The patenting in Japan, which covers the software and various biological products, microorganisms and antibiotics, is another step towards internationalization.
“This patent is very comprehensive, although we have already filed new patents”, says the officer who is also a researcher at CINTESIS and a professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP).
In the meantime, the company will move towards the CEE-IVD marking, which will allow it to enter the market as early as next year. This marking also depends on an external validation that is being carried out at a Spanish Hospital, in Madrid. The next step will be the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) marking, which will allow the new test to be marketed in the US as well.
The antimicrobial susceptibility testing market is estimated to reach $ 3.5 billion by 2020.
FASTinov is currently based in UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto.