NEW YORK — MBio Diagnostics said today that it has been awarded a roughly $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health grant to develop a point-of-care assay for sepsis.
The company also said it has received a contract from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for a separate sepsis test, but the size of the contract was not disclosed.
The two-year Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from NIH will be used to clinically validate a multiplex immunoassay for pediatric sepsis mortality risk. Being developed in collaboration with scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the assay uses five blood biomarkers — heat shock protein 70, matrix metalloproteinase-8, interleukin-8, C-C chemokine ligand 3, and granzyme B — and runs on the company's planar waveguide imaging-based point-of-care platform.
The HJF contract is supporting an alliance between MBio and the Austere Environments Consortium for Enhanced Sepsis Outcomes (ACESO), a US Navy-sponsored program developing tools and technologies for preventing, diagnosing, and treating sepsis in resource-constrained locations. ACESO has identified 10 blood-based sepsis biomarkers that the partners will evaluate in an immunoassay that will run on the company's platform.
"In addition to the devastating health impacts of sepsis, the financial burden sepsis management places on the healthcare system is enormous," MBio CEO Chris Myatt said in a statement. "By providing timely results at the point of care, the MBio system has the potential to both improve patient outcomes and reduce the overall costs of sepsis management."
About a year ago, Boulder, Colorado-based closed a roughly $12.3 million Series B round.