Resistell Closes Seed Round to Develop Faster Antibiotic Tests

Occident Group AG, Hemex AG and six angel investors joined the round, which was oversubscribed, Basel-based Resistell said in a press release today. The company aims to commercialize an antibiotic susceptibility test that is up to 100 times faster than current technology.

Drug-resistant infections kill about 700,000 people globally each year, according to the O'Neill Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, and patients given the wrong antibiotics risk longer hospital stays, requiring more-expensive treatment. Resistell estimates the intensive care cost of a patient with sepsis to be as much as 10,000 Swiss francs a day. Prescribing the wrong drug also accelerates bacterial resistance to existing antibiotics.

“It’s important to develop better diagnostics, not just new antibiotics, to combat antibiotic resistance,” Resistell CEO Danuta Cichocka said in an interview. Her company’s device can diagnose the most effective treatment between 10 and 100-times faster than current technology, depending on the bacteria causing infection. This may halve the expense hospitals incur through delayed or ineffective treatment, she said.

Faster diagnosis

Resistell’s nanotechnology and atomic force microscopy techniques get accurate results in hours, compared to conventional tests that need as long as three days for bacteria to be grown. The company uses intellectual property developed at Switzerland’s École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, by inventors and Resistell co-founders Giovanni Dietler and Sandor Kasas. The EPFL spin-off has received more than two million francs from federal research programs and charitable foundations since 2012.

Resistell incorporated and received a European patent for its device and method, before fundraising for pre-clinical development. Derek Brandt, CEO of medical device-maker Sensile Medical AG (sold to Gerresheimer AG this year), and Michal Bartos, former vice-president for Central Europe at Merck Group, have joined Resistell’s board of directors.

“Venture Kick played a very big role, as we met four of our eight investors through the program’s jury sessions,” Cichocka said. “Thanks to this program we probably closed sooner than we expected.”

Cichocka also praised the program's community and training. “What I really liked about the Venture Kick camps is that it’s very targeted help. It’s two days of discussing specific cases and you leave the course with a full recipe of what to do next: the exact milestones and the strategy to implement them.”