Austin, TX – November 21, 2024 – Pattern Bioscience, an innovator in rapid diagnosis and antibiotic susceptibility testing for bacterial infections, today announced it has been awarded a cost-share contract worth up to $40.9 million by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The base award of $22.5 million will support the late-stage development, verification, validation, and FDA clearance of Pattern’s single-cell microbiology system and its pneumonia and bacteremia identification (ID)/antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) panels. Optional phases of funding could expand the scope to address high-throughput urine screening and ID/AST testing for urinary tract infections.
Pattern’s innovative technology provides accelerated identification of bacterial pathogens and their antibiotic susceptibility profiles, allowing clinicians to optimize antimicrobial therapy days sooner than with traditional AST methods. This swift and precise information is critical both for individual patients and for combating the growing global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
“Pattern’s technology provides actionable insights within hours, allowing clinicians to select the most effective treatments much earlier in the infection course,” said Nick Arab, Co-founder and CEO of Pattern. “This collaboration with BARDA will accelerate our ability to bring this game-changing technology to the critical care setting, where timely intervention can mean the difference between life and death.”
Advancing Critical Care Diagnostics
Pattern’s ID/AST Panels are designed to rapidly identify pathogens and determine their antibiotic susceptibility. The panels funded under this award are focused on severe pneumonia and bacteremia, two of the most life-threatening infections faced in critical care settings.
“AST methods like broth microdilution and disk diffusion have historically served as the gold standard to guide appropriate antimicrobial therapy, they now present a significant bottleneck in clinical workflows and antimicrobial optimization,” explained Carey-Ann Burnham, Chief Clinical Officer of Pattern. “Pattern’s single-cell analysis technology enables clinicians to optimize therapy in a time frame critical for high-acuity infections—by the second dose of antimicrobials.”
The Pneumonia ID/AST Panel is designed to identify pathogens directly from clinical samples, bypassing a time-consuming culture step and provide same-day phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility profiles for more than 98% of the organisms typically detected in hospitalized pneumonia patients. Pattern’s Bacteremia ID/AST Panel is designed to identify pathogens and provide phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) directly from positive blood culture samples, eliminating the need for additional culturing and isolation steps to obtain faster phenotypic susceptibility results.
Growing Need for Rapid Diagnostics to Combat AMR
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant public health threat, both in the U.S. and globally. Nearly 5 million deaths worldwide are linked to infections caused by drug-resistant microbes, a figure expected to rise to 10 million annually by 2050. This crisis is exacerbated by the prolonged diagnostic uncertainty associated with traditional AST methods, which can delay the identification of pathogens and their antimicrobial susceptibility profiles by 2-4 days.
For patients with bacteremia, rapid antimicrobial treatment often means the difference between life and death. Bacteremia can lead to sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock. According to the CDC, 1.7M patients were hospitalized with a sepsis diagnosis in the US, leading to 350,000 deaths. Nosocomial pneumonia, particularly in ICU settings, contributes to over 1.8 million global sepsis-related deaths each year, with pneumosepsis secondary to respiratory infections carrying a mortality rate of 22%, the highest among all sepsis-related infections. Delays in appropriate antibiotic treatment can dramatically increase mortality risks in critically ill patients with pneumonia and bacteremia. Pattern’s rapid diagnostic platform aims to shorten this critical window, allowing for earlier and more targeted antimicrobial therapy.
This project has been supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), under contract number 75A50124C00042.
About Pattern
Pattern Bioscience aims to save lives by transforming how bacterial infections are diagnosed and to improve global health by reducing the burden of antibiotic resistance. Its single-cell microbiology technology is designed to deliver clinically actionable results in a timeframe that allows healthcare teams to deliver life-saving treatments in the crucial time frame that makes a real difference in patient outcomes. The company’s first tests target critically ill patients with pneumonia and bacteremia, identifying both the causal pathogen and its antibiotic susceptibility profile days sooner than with traditional AST testing. The Pattern system and assays have not been cleared by the FDA. Pattern Bioscience is a privately held company based in Austin, Texas, and is led by veterans of the diagnostic industry with deep experience bringing new diagnostic technologies to market. For more information, please visit pattern.bio.
For more information, please contact:
Contact: Kyle Fieleke
Email: kyle@pattern.bio
Website: pattern.bio