Unyvero AMR Atlas to Support Adoption of Rapid DNA Testing for Antibiotic Resistance

Curetis N.V., a developer of next-level molecular diagnostic solutions, has announced that it will introduce its newly developed Unyvero AMR Atlas at the upcoming 29th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), which will take place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on April 13-16, 2019.

The Unyvero AMR Atlas is a knowledge base of genetic antimicrobial resistance markers (AMR) that is specifically designed for Curetis’ Unyvero Application Cartridges. The Unyvero Platform allows rapid testing for a broad range of pathogens and antibiotic resistance markers associated with life-threatening infections in hospitalized patients. The Unyvero AMR Atlas provides Unyvero users with well-structured, marker-centric overviews of the available knowledge on the respective AMR markers featured on the Unyvero Application Cartridges.

The information provided by the Unyvero AMR Atlas includes mechanisms of resistance, antimicrobial drug classes affected by these mechanisms, prevalence of such markers in different bacterial pathogens and, most importantly, the accuracy of the markers in predicting resistance to these drugs. For clinicians, this information is key in considering the significance of the respective resistance markers when determining the optimal therapeutic strategy for patients with life-threatening infections. Thereby, they can realize the full potential of the rapid test results obtained with the Unyvero platform.

The cloud-based Unyvero AMR Atlas has been developed by Curetis’ subsidiary Ares Genetics (Vienna, Austria) and builds on ARESdb, Ares Genetics’ AI-powered reference database on the genetics of antimicrobial resistance. ARESdb currently covers detailed genetic data on more than 35,000 bacterial strains including quantitative data on the resistance phenotype of more than 100 antibiotics. The Unyvero AMR Atlas is initially tailored to Curetis’ Unyvero Pneumonia Applications, which includes HPN and LRT Cartridges for lower respiratory tract infections in Europe and the USA, respectively.

“While rapid syndromic testing holds great promises in improving infectious diseases management, it is not sufficient anymore to only provide information on the causative pathogen but also to test for the resistances already acquired by such pathogens,” said Dr. Achim Plum, Chief Business Officer of the Curetis Group and Managing Director of Ares Genetics. “However, interpreting the presence or absence of genetic resistance markers in the context of clinical decision making is quite complex. With the Unyvero AMR Atlas, the relevant scientific and clinical information on such markers are made available at the fingertips of our Unyvero customers via a well-structured and intuitive user interface. We expect that this will support the wide-spread adoption of such marker in routine clinical settings.”

“With the introduction of the first release of the Unyvero AMR Atlas at ECCMID 2019, we are excited to engage with the clinical microbiology community to demonstrate the benefits of this knowledge base in day-to-day decision making and the feedback will help with further development and enhancement of the platform,” explained Faranak Atrzadeh, Senior Vice President, Scientific Affairs and Marketing at Curetis.

The Unyvero AMR Atlas will be featured at the Curetis booth (#1.65) at ECCMID 2019 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on April 13-16, 2019.

Receive more news like this straight to your inbox, become a member for free today.