OpGen Highlights Capabilities of its Acuitas® Technologies to Rapidly Predict Antibiotic Susceptibility Using Drug Resistanc...

OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN) today announced that it has presented preliminary results supporting its Acuitas Rapid Test in development to detect antibiotic resistant genes and the use of predictive algorithms from its Acuitas Lighthouse® Knowledgebase to predict antibiotic susceptibility. The results were presented at the 27th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Vienna, Austria.

The poster, titled “Prediction of antibiotic resistance in Escherichia coli from resistance genes,” compared phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) with the emerging capabilities of Lighthouse Knowledgebase informatics to predict antibiotic resistance using resistance genes from bacterial isolates. The results of testing over 1,900 E. coli isolates with PCR yielded strong prediction of phenotypic antibiotic resistance for seventeen antibiotics representing seven antibiotic classes with accuracies ranging from 77% to 97%. Resistance for 12 of the antibiotics were predicted with 90% or greater accuracy.

A second poster, titled “Rapid outbreak detection of multidrug-resistant organisms using resistance gene profiles,” illustrated the potential to detect hospital pathogen outbreaks by clustering isolates based on resistance gene profiles using a PCR-based test. Outbreak clusters of P. aeruginosa and E. coli were accurately discriminated using multiple resistance genes, thereby demonstrating that a multiplexed PCR-based test has potential to be a rapid, accurate, and efficient method for surveillance of multidrug-resistant organisms.

“In the preliminary results presented at ECCMID, our Acuitas technology demonstrated the ability to rapidly and accurately predict antibiotic susceptibility using resistance gene profiles,” said Evan Jones, Chairman and CEO of OpGen. “The development of our first Acuitas Rapid Test to detect resistance genes for interpretation by our Acuitas Lighthouse informatics is underway. The data presented at ECCMID support the potential clinical utility of this exciting new technology.”   

About OpGen OpGen, Inc. is harnessing the power of informatics and genomic analysis to provide complete solutions for patient, hospital and network-wide infection prevention and treatment. Learn more at www.opgen.com and follow OpGen on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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