Acolyte Biomedica and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have successfully resolved the challenge of rapid, highly sensitive enumeration of gram-negative bacterial cells.
John Wain of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute's molecular microbiology team is employing the Acolyte BacLite Rapitect GN assay in work investigating the genetic diversity of the natural populations of human bacterial pathogens.
As part of the evaluation of genetic mechanisms involved in the spread of antimicrobial resistance, John Wain's team has been using plasmids to incorporate resistance genes into model cell lines.
The time consuming and labour intensive element of the work has then been to characterise and profile the cells produced through growth studies.
In recognising the potential of Acolyte's adenylate kinase (AK) technology, Wain's team was able to demonstrate dramatic reductions in time and effort needed to deliver their results, typically producing growth curves in one or two hours.
The BacLite Rapitect GN assay uses adenylate kinase as a highly sensitive marker to detect cell numbers.
Unlike ATP, AK is present at constant levels in all bacterial cells irrespective of the organism's metabolic state.
The amplification of the conversion of ADP to ATP gives sensitivities up to 100 times those of standard ATP bioluminescence and up to one million times those of optical measurements.
Wain said: "Our current research is directed towards investigating antimicrobial chemotherapy and vaccine use in the developing world.
"We have been forging links with regions of the world where the infectious disease burden is greatest and believe this collaboration will directly benefit infectious disease research globally".
Steve O'Hara, director of microbiology at Acolyte, said: "We are delighted to have cooperated with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute on our first life sciences application of AK technology licensed exclusively to us by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory.
"We intend to further develop the Rapitect name through the development of research assays for all prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells".
Acolyte Biomedica is a privately-funded UK company developing proprietary diagnostic systems and research reagents for clinical microbiology and life sciences.
Acolyte's platform (BacLite) allows microbial detection in hours instead of days, with the potential to reduce hospital costs and improve management of microbial infections.
The BacLite system is said to be unique within infectious disease diagnostics, providing accelerated culture based detection of micro-organisms direct from clinical specimens.
The technology built into the BacLite system was originally developed by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton Down, a division of the UK Ministry of Defence.
AK Rapid technology exploits the bioluminescent detection of adenylate kinase for ultra sensitive micro-organism detection.
Acolyte has the exclusive license to AK Rapid technology for clinical microbiology and benefits from an ongoing collaboration with Dstl, which is also a shareholder in Acolyte.
The company has also received venture funding from Angle, Partnerships UK, Porton Capital Technology Funds, and Dstl.
Acolyte Biomedica's first product, which was available in June 2005, is the BacLite Rapid MRSA, a five-hour screening test direct from a swab, providing a cost effective same day MRSA result.
The BacLite system is being further developed to offer integrated identification and antibiotic resistance testing (ID/Art) products including 'super-bugs' (eg MRSA), a flexible, customisable panel of antibiotic sensitivity/resistance tests that may be used with any ID technology (probes, immune-extraction, specific lyses or culture).
Results in 2-5 hours directly from clinical specimens.
Life science reagents for the rapid detection and enumeration of bacteria to accelerate research programmes monitoring microbial growth.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a genome research centre set up in 1992 by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council in order to further knowledge of genomes, and in particular to play a substantial role in the sequencing and interpretation of the human genome.
This information will underpin research on human biology and disease.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is at the forefront of experimental and computational genome research.
It has strengths in genome sequencing, high throughput systems, informatics and analysis of gene function using genetic approaches in a variety of model organisms and humans.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is one of the leading genomics centres in the world, dedicated to analysing and understanding genomes.
Through large-scale analysis - and focused research and collaborations - the Sanger Institute's programmes underpin biological and medical research worldwide.
Formerly the Sanger Centre, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute was founded in 1993 by the Wellcome Trust and the UK Medical Research Council (MRC).
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is a non-trading, non-profit making registered charity involved in biomedical research.
The vast majority of its funding is now provided by the Wellcome Trust, which announced in October 2001 an award of £300 million (US$430 million) to support the Institute from 2001 to 2006.
