Nowdiagnostics Inc. established an exclusive agreement with Labcorp Holdings Inc. for distribution of its First To Know syphilis test in the U.S. The test provides results in 15 minutes with as little as a single drop of blood. The test will be available to hospitals and clinicians by the end of 2024 and offered to patients directly through Labcorp Ondemand in 2025.

Clostridioides difficile is traditionally isolated from healthcare facilities' inpatients, but it is increasingly being identified in people who have not recently been hospitalized and is more and more found in community settings. Investigators from Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania developed an mRNA-LNP vaccine with promising results in preventing and controlling C. difficile infection.

Implementation of Flosonics Medical Inc.’s Flopatch reduced sepsis-associated mortality more than 80% in a California public hospital, a case study showed. A wearable Doppler ultrasound device, Flopatch continuously assesses blood flow to guide fluid delivery and resuscitation in critically ill patients.

Noul Co. Ltd.’s Micro-Intelligent Laboratory, an artificial intelligence-powered diagnostic system, demonstrated superiority over microscopic diagnosis for malaria in a study presented at the 2024 International Congress for Tropical Medicine and Malaria.

Shares of Chinese and South Korean med-tech companies continued to rise after the World Health Organization declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern Aug. 14 after recent outbreaks.

Quantamatrix Inc. is advancing an Ultra-Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing sepsis diagnostic test, touted as having the world’s fastest all-in-one antimicrobial technology, to reduce sepsis diagnosis time from days to an average of 13 hours.

“There are hundreds of strains of bird flu, and most of them don’t infect humans, or even mammals,” Stephen Cusack told BioWorld. “There are two main reasons for that.” To be able to cause an infection, a virus “has to be able to get into the cell, and for that it needs a receptor,” Cusack said. For influenza viruses, those receptors are hemagglutinin receptors, and they differ in subtle but important ways between birds and mammals.

Ondine Biomedical Inc.’s Steriwave light-activated antimicrobial technology will be used in a pilot program at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in the U.K. to help fight infections in patients undergoing skull base sinus surgery. The Steriwave technology offers a quick nasal decolonization treatment that reduces the need for antibiotics and the risk of postoperative infections.

Noze Inc. breathes a little easier with a new $5 million equity investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the development of Diagnoze, a breath-based, hand-held diagnostic device. The foundation provided two earlier grants focused on diagnosing tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries. “We're thrilled to see our partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation continue to grow,” Noze CEO Karim Aly told BioWorld.