Bristol-based biotech company, FluoretiQ, who is developing fast and accurate point-of-care testing for Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), has taken a significant step forward after having a key patent granted.

The University of Bristol spinout joined our incubation programme in 2021 with the vision of enabling more targeted antibiotic use and mitigating the impending crisis being caused by growing antimicrobial resistance.

FluoretiQ has announced that the European Patent for SCFI, a groundbreaking antibiotic susceptibility testing platform invented by a team of University of Bristol researchers led by Dr. Massimo Antognozzi and under exclusive license to FluoretiQ, has now been granted. This is a critical milestone on the journey to commercialisation and provides external validation in the technology.

SCFI is an optical system that uses machine learning to analyse nanoscale movement in bacterial cells. Within just 30 minutes of treatment with antibiotics, it can determine whether the cells are alive, dead or dying and thereby determine which antibiotics would be most effective.

The next stage for FluoretiQ is to continue the development of a 30-minute point-of-care system – this would be one of the world’s fastest and most accurate phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility tests, and will initially address UTIs and STDs.

There are approximately 404 million UTI’s reported across the world each year, with approximately 908 diagnosed by the NHS every hour. Meanwhile gonorrhoea infections are on the rise – rates have increased across 97% of all UK council areas since 2017. However, overuse of antibiotics has meant that bacteria from routine infections are becoming more resilient against antibiotics – currently more than 700,000 people die each year because of these untreatable infections and that number is only going to rise unless solutions can be found and implemented.

Josephine Dorh, Co-founder and CTO of FluoretiQ, says the company’s new technology can help address these challenges facing the healthcare industry: “SCFI is a true gamechanger for enabling accurate and timely antibiotic use and we look forward to delivering a family of life-saving products from the SCFI platform.”

Learn more about FluoretiQ: fluoretiq.com

Find out more about SETsquared Bristol’s incubation programme.