Ares Genetics GmbH received funding from the Vienna Business Agency (Vienna, Austria) for the development of a prototype solution for the rapid, Next-Generation Sequencing-based diagnosis of pathogens and associated antibiotic resistances for patients suffering from severe infections. The total volume of the 2.5-year TRIPLE-A (Assay Development and Artificial Intelligence to Diagnose Antibiotic Resistant Infections) development project amounts to EUR 1.3 million. Vienna Business Agency is already supporting the ARES&CO Pharma Partnering Program of Ares Genetics, under which the Company recently partnered with Sandoz for the development of a digital anti-infectives platform.
Microbial infections and antibiotic resistances have become a major healthcare challenge, with antimicrobial resistance estimated to have caused 700,000 deaths globally in 2016, a number that is projected to dramatically increase to 10 million deaths annually by 2050 if no countermeasures are taken. Ares Genetics seeks to address this challenge with a disruptive approach based on high-resolution Next Generation Sequencing (“NGS”) technology in combination with a proprietary, artificial intelligence (“AI”) curated genetic pathogen and antibiotic resistance (“AMR”) reference database, ARESdb, for result interpretation. To this end, the Company in September 2018 has initiated the development of the ARESupa Universal Pathogenome Assay, a single diagnostic test designed to detect any pathogen and associated drug resistances from any native patient sample.
As engineering and in-silico assay design further advanced since September 2018, the TRIPLE-A project funded by the Vienna Business Agency now aims to develop a laboratory prototype of ARESupa. Therefore, Ares Genetics is currently setting up ARESlab, a dedicated R&D and diagnostic service laboratory in Vienna, Austria, for in-house test development and initial commercialization in Europe.