Aperture Bio has begun accepting pre-orders of its RAPID-B™ and its empiriSTAT menu of diagnostic tests.

Using highly customized and fully robotic, flow cytometric technology (nFC) and fluidics, coupled with proprietary selection algorithms and customized platting, the RAPID-B platform can discriminate, along with other contaminants, live uropathogen cells from those that are dead/damaged, which could result in false positives. Utilizing a sensitive array of lasers, the system then enumerates only viable bacteria and white blood cells within minutes and provides Antibiotic Predictive Profiling (APP) within hours. Specifically knowing which patients to treat and what to best to treat them with could greatly reduce the risks for millions of patients being unnecessarily overexposed to antibiotics and saving millions in healthcare costs.

The speed and accuracy of the empiriSTAT test has demonstrated to out-perform other screening methods including chemical strips, microscopy and PCR. Even standard urinalysis screening, which is semiquantitative and lacks precision and standardization, results in a high rate of misinterpretation, which can lead to under-treatment, or more often, over-treatment with empirical antibiotics. When compared to current screening and culture methodology, accompanied with follow through AST testing, which all can take days, the RAPID-B could change how bacterial infections are detected and treated, disrupting the multi-billion-dollar laboratory testing industry.

Achieving 97% sensitivity and 87% specificity, the empiriSTAT-UTI, is the first in a series of in vitro tests developed to increase the speed and accuracy of identifying bacterial infections from both urine and blood. The speed and accuracy of the test will reduce days into hours when compared to current screen, culture and reflexed Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing (AST.)

With reports suggesting that +/-80% of blood and +/-60% of urine cultures come back negative, the ability to accurately and rapid discriminate positive vs. negative patients within minutes, could significantly reduce the over-use and mis-use of antibiotics, which is at the the foundation of the antibiotic resistance pandemic. The unintentional over-use or mis-uses, is in great part due to the empirical over-prescribing of antibiotics in a somewhat blind, defensive response by caregivers as the wait for results.