SpeeDx Signs Deal with Roche to Develop Antibiotic Resistance Diagnostics

17 June 2020

Pictured (l-R): CFO Bhavin Raval, Co-Founder & Chief Technical Officer Elisa Mokany, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer Alison Todd, CEO Colin Denver. Photo by Michael Amendolia. 

Congratulations to diagnostics company SpeeDx, who announced today they had partnered with Roche to expand access to Antibiotic Resistance tests and technology.

SpeeDx CEO Colin Denver said the access will be great for the company’s development of the Antibiotic Resistance tests.

“This agreement is a significant inflection point for our company and will enable more patients and clinicians around the world to access key diagnostic tools for the management of antibiotic resistance,” said Mr Denver.

“Our innovative diagnostic tests go beyond simple pathogen detection and support Resistance Guided Therapy – providing information on antibiotic resistance to empower clinicians with the information they need to make appropriate treatment decisions.”

SpeeDx, a Biomedical Translation Bridge (BTB) program Round 1 recipient, is seeking to commercialise its ResistancePlus® MABSC/MAC test, a rapid in vitro diagnostic tool to accurately and quickly identify bacterial infections related to Cystic Fibrosis, while using gene markers to predict antibiotic susceptibility or resistance.

MTPConnect Director BTB Lauren Kelly, welcomes the announcement and said it may have a flow-on benefit to their cystic fibrosis research project once the diagnostic is developed.

“We are pleased to see SpeeDx partner with Roche to expand access to their technology globally, so clinicians and researchers can perform these diagnostics tests,” Ms Kelly added.

“It’s great to be able to celebrate and amplilfy the successes of companies we support through our BTB program.”

The BTB program is operated by MTPConnect, in partnership with BioCurate (University of Melbourne and Monash University), UniQuest (University of Queensland through its drug discovery initiative QEDDI), the Medical Device Partnering Program (MDPP, led by Flinders University), and the Bridge and BridgeTech programs (Queensland University of Technology); all pre-eminent organisations engaged in the translation and commercialisation of health and medical research.