NEW YORK – Ginkgo Bioworks said Thursday that it is part of a consortium that could receive up to €24 million ($25.1 million) over four years from the EU4Health program to develop a rapid, point-of-care, sequencing-based test for respiratory pathogens.
In collaboration with the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA), the consortium will develop a metagenomic sequencing solution, called Rapid Next-Generation Sequencing for Effective Medical Response (RANGER), to help hospitals and other healthcare facilities diagnose respiratory viruses.
In the first phase, Ginkgo and its partners — Jumpcode Genomics, the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), BugSeq, and Planet Innovation — will bring together existing technologies into a benchtop device. They aim to create an instrument that allows for automated, push-button sample preparation and six-hour turnaround time.
The consortium will take that device through clinical trials in hospital settings in the EU in partnership with Belgium's KU Leuven, Sweden's Karolinska University Hospital, and Estonia's Tartu University Hospital. Finally, Ginkgo will collaborate with medical device regulatory specialists at the QbD Group to secure EU certification and validation for certain analytes and sample types before bringing the device to market.
Under the terms of the deal, the European Commission holds the option to procure 200 devices at preferred pricing.
"Diagnostics as decision-making tools are a key component of our toolbox to rapidly respond to health emergencies. The ability to quickly identify even previously unknown pathogens will be a critical step in reinforcing the EU's collective health resilience," Laurent Muschel, acting director-general of the European Commission's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), said in a statement.
The consortium is built around a collaboration between Jumpcode and TGen that uses CRISPR-based sample prep technology and metagenomic sequencing to detect COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.