Tag: Anne Thews

Company News: Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Robin Patel Named Principal Investigator for Curetis’ Unyvero™ LRT Trial

– Curetis adds six new trial sites, significantly expanding U.S. clinical trial network for ongoing FDA study

Curetis AG, a developer of next-level molecular diagnostic solutions, today announced that Robin Patel, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Microbiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has been named Lead Principal Investigator of the company’s Unyvero™ LRT Application FDA trial. The lower respiratory tract (LRT) application is designed to detect 17 pathogens and 22 antibiotic resistance gene markers of clinical importance in patients with suspected LRT infections. The Company also announced the addition of six new clinical trial sites in the last few quarters, expanding its clinical trial network to nine high-profile testing sites.

Dr. Patel, who chairs the Division of Clinical Microbiology and Mayo Clinic’s Bacteriology Laboratory and directs the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, is a specialist in the clinical detection and identification of bacteria, including the characterization of their antimicrobial resistance and susceptibility, particularly for biofilm-mediated infections. She succeeds Prof. Christine Ginocchio, M.D., formerly of North Shore-LIJ Health System Laboratories, who recently left North Shore-LIJ to assume a corporate position in the microbiology field.

To bolster enrollment and to capture potential geographical differences in pathogen and antibiotic resistance gene distribution, Curetis has also expanded its clinical trial network from three to nine testing sites over the past couple of quarters.

Participating trial centers testing at least 2,000 prospective lower respiratory tract samples include:

  • David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (Los Angeles, Calif.)
  • Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, Md.)
  • Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago, Ill.)
  • Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
  • North Shore-LIJ Health System Laboratories (Lake Success, N.Y.)
  • University of Rochester Medical Center (Rochester, N.Y.)
  • Weis Research Center/Geisinger Health System (Danville, Penn.)
  • University of Washington Medical Center (Seattle, Wash.)
  • William Beaumont Hospital (Royal Oak, Mich.)

Company News: Curetis Presents New Clinical Validation Data on its Unyvero™ P50 Pneumonia / LRT Application

–      Clinical studies from U.S. and Switzerland confirm previous performance data

–      Findings presented at DGHM/DGI 2013 and ICAAC 2013

Curetis AG today announced the presentation of additional clinical validation data on its Unyvero™ P50 / LRT application at two international conferences. The cartridge is designed to detect 16 respiratory bacteria and one fungus responsible for about 80% of severe non-viral pneumonia cases. In addition, it is able to simultaneously identify 22 antibiotic resistance markers.

At this year’s 53rd Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC 2013) in Denver, CO, researchers from the Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Chicago, IL) and Curetis presented data generated during the initial familiarization and training phase for the FDA trial of the Unyvero™ LRT application, an investigational device. It is based on the panel of the P50 cartridge, which is already marketed outside the U.S. In the small cohort using native clinical samples, the Unyvero™ LRT application achieved an overall sensitivity of 89% and an overall specificity of 98% for pathogen identification. Moreover, it detected 6 additional pathogens not discovered by routine microbiological culture. The resistance markers showed an overall sensitivity of 87% at an overall specificity of 97%. The authors conclude that “this data indicates that the system can significantly contribute to patient management by providing rapid pathogen identification and antimicrobial resistance profiling.”

At the 65th Joint Annual Meeting of the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology and the German Society for Infectious Diseases (DGHM/DGI 2013) in Rostock, Germany, clinicians from the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland, presented data comparing the Unyvero™ P50 cartridge with standard microbiological culture, including anti-microbial susceptibility testing. While in 104 cases microbiology culture detected 96 pathogens evaluable by the Unyvero™ P50 cartridge, P50 detected 73 pathogens (76%). However, Unyvero™ P50 detected 68 microorganisms that were not listed in the culture report. Of these, 46% were S. pneumoniae and 10% were H. influenzae – pathogens difficult to culture or part of the oral flora for which clinical significance is not yet determined. The discrepancies are still under investigation. Phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility or resistance was predicted correctly in 82% of cases by Unyvero™ P50. While standard culture and anti-microbial susceptibility testing took 2 to 4 days, the Unyvero™ results were obtained in less than 4.5 hours. The Basel microbiology team concluded that the “Unyvero™ Pneumonia P50 assay is able to provide fast and clinically useful results on the most prevalent pathogens causing pneumonia and their antibiotic resistance genes.”

A previous study testing more than 1,000 samples in Europe showed an overall sensitivity of 81% and an overall specificity of 96%.