Talis Biomedical Corporation awarded $5.6M by NIH

MENLO PARK, Calif., June 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Talis is developing a high-performance diagnostic platform to enable physician offices and clinics to run reference lab quality diagnostic tests for infectious diseases at the point-of-care. The award of up to $5.6M award (over the next 5 years) from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health will fund development of a rapid, sensitive, and specific diagnostic system for the culture-independent identification and determination of antimicrobial susceptibility of bacterial pathogens from whole blood.  

The indiscriminate use and misuse of antibiotics has led to an impending global health crisis: the development of widespread antibiotic resistance. Bloodstream infections (BSI) are particularly significant with respect to their clinical impact: severe sepsis strikes more than 1.5M Americans every year; 15 to 30 percent of the patients die. Unfortunately, current blood culture methodology requires 1-5 days for pathogen identification, plus an additional 24 hours for susceptibility testing. As a result, about half of all antibiotics prescribed in U.S. acute care hospitals are either unnecessary or inappropriate, leading to poor outcomes and inadequate antibiotic stewardship. Point-of-care diagnostic platforms that can measure the drug susceptibility of a pathogen directly from clinical samples, eliminating lengthy procedures that require microbial growth can help in the fight against antibiotic resistant organisms. 

"This award from the NIH provides Talis a unique opportunity to create a new paradigm in diagnosis and treatment of bloodstream infections directly from clinical samples at the point- of-care," said Brian Coe, Chief Executive Officer of Talis. "We believe that through these research efforts we will have the opportunity to save countless lives, and to substantially reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance."

The Talis system leverages proprietary isothermal amplification chemistries, innovative engineering and powerful data science tools to enable users to load sample, walk away, and have results in time to make a treatment decision. The rapid, digital quantification capability of the company's proprietary SlipChip technology of parallel processing of thousands of nanoliter volume chambers will enable pathogen identification and susceptibility to antibiotics in less than two hours.

About Talis Bio
Talis is developing a new class of diagnostic systems to enable rapid, Point Of Care testing across a wide range of healthcare settings. From the doctor's office to the hospital bedside to remote care settings, we are re-defining the treatment of infectious diseases. Contact us for partnership inquiries.

The content is solely the responsibility of the Talis Biomedical and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

SOURCE Talis