EU funding for innovative PhageSense rapid detection platform

Gdansk, Poland: – Specialist bacteriophage CRO Phage Consultants (PC) has received substantial EU-backed funding for development of its innovative Phage Sense platform to detect phage infections in industrial fermentations.

The funding is worth more than PLN 2,253 700 (EUR 531, 678), which represents more than two thirds of the total estimated project cost of 3,368,079 (EUR 794,583). The funds are being provided by the Pomeranian Development Agency from the EU-subsidized European Funds for Pomerania (FEPM) tranche that is dedicated to R&D projects.

Specialized equipment

PC has announced that the funds will be used to purchase specialized equipment necessary for the project, such as anaerobic chamber, nanopore sequencer, autoclave, and fluorometer.

PhageSense is envisaged as an innovative diagnostic platform that will provide faster and more sensitive means of detecting the bacteriophage infections, which can wreck fermentation processes that use bacteria. This poses a major problem for biotechnology and biopharmaceutical sectors such as probiotics where current inability to detect phage infections in time can lead to significant production losses and line downtime and in extreme cases, to company failure.

Scalable solution 

The PhageSense project, scheduled to complete by August 2029, will focus on automated detection of bacteriophage infections in bacterial cultures, including bioreactors.

Phage Consultants is designing the new platform to be highly scalable so that it can be rolled out across industrial biotechnology and biopharmaceutical sectors to increase production efficiency, reduce financial losses, and improve production safety and quality standards.

Phage Consultants co-founder and CEO Dr. Marcin Łoś commented: “This platform will help to solve the problem of the lack of rapid, sensitive methods for detecting infections. We hope to implement these solutions on a large scale, and this funding will help us to do that.”

“The project will draw on out almost two decades of experience in the field of bacteriophage activity in the microbiome and our previous development of specialized tools to test for RCB, WCB and MCB virulent phages and inducible prophage,” he added.

About Phage Consultants

Phage Consultants is a contract research and manufacturing organization that specializes in bacteriophage detection, characterization and production, but also prevention and eradication from laboratories and production facilities.

Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that infect bacteria. First discovered around 1915, phages are the most numerous organisms in the biosphere and played an important role in understanding fundamental molecular biology for example horizontal gene transfer Bacteriophages have different possible life cycles – lytic and lysogenic cycles – along with physical environment. They have been used for almost a century as alternatives to antibiotics and can have therapeutic effect against multi-drug-resistant strains of many bacteria. In biotechnology, their activity can be devastating when bacterial cultures get infected. They can cause long-lasting recurrent infections which prevent successful production and in the past some facilities have been forced to close down due to their activities.

Founded in Gdansk, Poland, in 2007, PC has become a world leader in using the power of bacteriophage technology in bioprocess infection and contamination control and assisting companies whose production is based on microbial activities in preventing bacteriophage contamination, along with bacterial, fungal and viral contaminations.

Phage Consultants is also a team specialist in the field of bacteriophage biology with specific expertise in phage activity in bioprocesses. The team provides unique assistance to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, offering a range of services from personal training to consulting and process optimization in phage growth limitation. The company also advises and assists clients in the development of new production facilities.

Further information at: http://www.phageconsultants.com

Resources

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