OptiCul Diagnostics Ltd. has been recruited by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a special project to detect the presence of bacteria on medical devices. The company has developed a fast and specific kit for the detection of bacteria without the use of reagents.
Medical devices that are inadequately disinfected are a major problem at hospitals, and the FDA wants to establish a binding testing procedure for devices to ensure that they are sterile before being transferred from one patient to another. There is no device on the market that can conduct such tests quickly enough, and the FDA will support the development of an OptiCul product for this purpose and include it in studies for the purpose of preparing the procedures.
OptiCul's device could therefore become the standard for these tests, which the FDA will make mandatory.
The FDA will fully finance OptiCul's participation, which will amount to a few million dollars, as part of the $100 million study.
OptiCul CTO Dr. Israel Gannot and VP clinical and regulations Galiya Gannot founded the company in 2008 at Van Leer Ventures Jerusalem Ltd. Its chairman is Dr. Shimon Eckhouse, the chairman of Syneron Medical Ltd. (Nasdaq: ELOS. The company has raised $3 million from Docor International Management Ltd., the Jerusalem Development Authority, ORS Ltd., and private investors.
OptiCul's core business is the development of fast tests for bacteria by hospitals. Current tests require taking a culture and waiting 24 hours until there are sufficient bacteria. The cultures are then dispersed among petri dishes with different medium for another 24 hours to find out which bacteria are present. OptiCul's technology eliminates the need for the mediums, speeding up the diagnostic process. It currently has to products, StrepSense to detect streptococcus in throat swabs, and Optidet, which detects bacteria immediately from the primary culture plate.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 29, 2012
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