Accelr8 Technology Corporation Announces Pilot Study Completion For Rapid MRSA Identification

DENVER, Feb. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Accelr8 Technology Corporation announced today that the editorial reviewers for a major annual scientific meeting have accepted Accelr8 scientists' submission for a technical presentation. The company will describe the results of rapid analysis of a major type of drug-resistant "Staph" bacteria known as MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus). The meeting will be the 107th General Meeting of the American Society of Microbiology, being held in May in Toronto. The study to be presented is the first part of a two-phase study on MRSA using Accelr8's new rapid analytical methods.

The test methods identify the presence of highly drug-resistant bacteria. Rapid identification can help the physician rule out antibiotics that are likely to prove inadequate. Accelr8 uses these methods in its BACcel(TM)-1.0 system, now in development.

MRSA causes infections that are resistant to most antibiotics, leaving few choices for effective therapy. Since its first recognized appearance in 1961, MRSA has spread to become the dominant type of hospital-acquired "Staph" infection in most countries. According to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, a MRSA variant has also become the most common cause of community-acquired skin and soft tissue infection seen in hospital emergency departments in the US.

Standard antibiotic susceptibility testing now requires 24-48 hours to report a result. This is too late to help the physician assure adequate initial therapy. Accelr8's goal is to identify in less than 8 hours whether bacteria in a specimen belong to one of the three major categories of highly resistant pathogens. MRSA is one of these categories.

The company estimates that S. aureus is responsible for approximately 25% of life-threatening infections in the ICU. In most cities, approximately two-thirds of such infections are caused by MRSA. For critically ill patients who contract a hospital-acquired infection, the physician needs to know quickly whether or not highly resistant bacteria are the cause. A change in therapy as soon as 24 hours after starting inadequate therapy fails to improve outcomes. Therefore the physician must minimize the risk of resistant organisms causing failure of the initial therapy.

According to David Howson, Accelr8's president, "we're making rapid progress in our studies on identifying organisms that belong in any of the three major drug resistance categories that are most difficult to treat in the ICU. Each of the three categories requires a two-stage study. We expect to complete expanded studies on large collections of bacterial strains and present them to the medical and scientific communities this year. The May presentation is the first in this series, and we are very pleased with the results."

"As far as we can determine, we remain alone in developing a practical diagnostic solution that eliminates bacterial culturing. Within the diagnostics industry, recent acquisitions and new product announcements related to MRSA address important applications in screening carriers of dangerous bacteria, but not in diagnosing active infections. The urgent problem of delayed diagnosis of actual infections remains unaddressed. Most of the new rapid methods for screening depend on specific conditions, such as the existence of a single gene responsible for resistance. In contrast, our methods allow direct adaptation to the multiple species and complex mechanisms of resistance necessary to support clinical diagnoses. Even so, the speed of our methods even exceeds that of most rapid screening tests," Howson concluded.

Further information about rapid bacterial analysis is available on the company's Web site at www.accelr8.com.

About Accelr8

Accelr8 Technology Corporation (www.accelr8.com) is a developer of innovative materials and instrumentation for advanced applications in medical instrumentation, basic research, drug discovery, and bio-detection. Accelr8 is developing a rapid clinical pathogen platforms, the BACcel(TM)-1.0 and the BACcelr8r(TM), based on its innovative surface coatings, assay processing, and detection technologies. In addition, Accelr8 licenses certain of its proprietary technology for use in applications outside of Accelr8's own products.

Accelr8 Technology Corporation

CONTACT: John Metzger of Metzger Associates, +1-303-786-7000, ext. 2202,john@metzger.com, or David Howson of Accelr8 Technology, +1-303-863-8088,david.howson@accelr8.com

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