Infectious disease startup Day Zero Diagnostics last week received a $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to further develop its nanopore sequencing-based technology for the analysis of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) outbreaks.
Day Zero said that it will use the Phase I Small Business Innovation Research funding to integrate Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ (ONT) ultra-long read genomic sequencing into its EpiXact service, in which it sequences and analyzes isolates sent from healthcare facilities to help determine the relationships between infections during a suspected outbreak.
“Precision and speed are essential for identifying and controlling HAI outbreaks,” Mohamad Sater, director of computational biology at Day Zero, said in a statement. “This award from the NIH will help accelerate the integration of ONT’s ultra-long read genomic sequencing into our service and allow us to provide accurate decision-making information to infection control professionals faster than ever before.”