Bacteromic Sp. z o.o., a company that belongs to the Scope Fluidics S.A. Capital Group, received from the European Patent Office (EPO) a „European search report” and a written opinion for the first European patent application regarding the BacterOMIC system.. The EPO considered this solution to be new and innovative. This means that the Company has positively completed the most important stage of the patent procedure, which is expected to last until 2020.
In July 2018. Bacteromic Sp. z o.o. filed with the EPO a patent application titled „Method and system for rapid testing of microbial susceptibility”. The opinion of the Office is fully positive – the regulatory authority recognized not only the formal correctness, but, more importantly, deemed the applied solution as new and innovative. In each category of evaluation, the invention developed by the company from the Scope Fluidics group received the highest score ,”A”. This means that the application and the invention to which the application refers meet all the conditions for granting of a patent, as stipulated in the European Patent Convention.
The last stage of the patent granting procedure is to verify whether other European patent applications, published during the Bacteromic application procedure, will not undermine the novelty of the Polish company’s invention. This stage is expected to be completed at the beginning of 2020.
– Being granted with such a high rating by the Office is a positive forecast for our Company. Lower rating would not pose an obstacle on our way to obtaining the patent, but we know that the EPO does not grant the maximum rating often. Therefore, we are even more confident in our hope for the success of the BacterOMIC project. Analytical methods are difficult to patent. The report confirms that the method developed by Bacteromic is second to none. Developing a rapid method for determining the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics is potentially another advantage of the system – whose main strength is the genuinely comprehensive character of testing, even 10 times greater than the competition. The BacterOMIC system will be able to analyse the reaction of bacteria to all antibiotics at the same time, as well as verify the effectiveness of the combination of different antibiotics. To our knowledge, no other existing system has such capabilities, says Prof. Piotr Garstecki, co-founder, key shareholder and CEO of Scope Fluidics S.A.
Struggle with bacterial resistance to antibiotics is becoming an increasingly serious challenge. Already today in Europe, 70% of infections are resistant to one or more antibiotics. According to the estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO), drug-resistant bacteria can be fatal to up to 300 million people worldwide over the next 35 years, which makes them the most important public health threat.
The BacterOMIC project is a response to the growing phenomenon of antibiotic resistance of bacteria. The Company’s product is to accelerate and increase the effectiveness of patient treatment by identifying the best targeted therapies for a given patient. Within a few hours, it will precisely assess the sensitivity of bacteria to all clinically important antibiotics and will provide the physician with comprehensive information about the pathogen. The BacterOMIC system will use classic microbiological methods for antibiotic susceptibility testing, combined with an innovative microfluidic technology. The main competitive advantage of BacterOMIC is that it will be a much more comprehensive test than in other systems available on the market.