Overview
SeLux Diagnostics is developing a Next Generation Phenotyping (NGP) platform that promises to transform infectious disease patient treatment by dramatically increasing the speed and accuracy with which targeted, personalized antibiotic therapies can be prescribed. Earlier, better-informed treatment decisions will save lives, improve patient outcomes, decrease hospital lengths of stay and hospital acquired infections, and help combat the global antibiotic resistance epidemic.
The CDC has cited bacterial resistance to antibiotics among the world’s deadliest and costliest health threats. Using current technologies, doctors must overprescribe powerful, broad-spectrum antibiotics for days while waiting for key diagnostic results to direct personalized therapy. SeLux’s Next Generation Phenotyping (NGP) system provides virtually instantaneous AST results, fast-tracking targeted patient therapies so patients can receive the treatments they need on day one.
SeLux Diagnostics was founded in 2014 by two Yale- and Harvard-trained engineers working in an improvised attic laboratory. By 2018, SeLux’s phenotypic test had garnered the recognition and support of the National Institute of Health and Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the technology’s promising impact, advancing through the Series B round of funding that will allow them to complete product development and perform the clinical trials required to gain FDA clearance.
On September 25, 2018, the company announced that it had signed a milestone-based contract worth up to $45 million with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).
SeLux immediately receives $9.3 million from BARDA to fund the clinical trial necessary for SeLux NGP, SeLux’s next-generation phenotyping platform. The additional $36 million will fund the development of SeLux’s second-generation rapid sepsis diagnostic system.
SeLux has also raised $25 million in Series B financing to support the pivotal FDA trial for SeLux’s next-generation phenotyping (NGP) platform. The round was led by Sands Capital Ventures and included returning investors RA Capital and Schooner Capital and new investors Sands Capital and Northpond Ventures. This funding positions SeLux to complete development and perform the clinical trial necessary to gain FDA clearance.