Lecturer's spin-off company gets boost

Spectromics, a company launched last year, have secured a significant investment for development of a device that can be used to tell whether a patient has a bacterial infection and, if an antibiotic is required, provide guidance on which drug to prescribe.

The founding scientists of Spectromics: Professor Roy Goodacre, of Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and Dr Mat Upton, of the School of Biomedical and Healthcare Sciences, Plymouth University, have worked on this technology for a number of years prior to company formation, they are now both Directors of the company.

The company is developing the technology into a point-of-prescription test that fits within a typical 10 minute doctor-patient appointment. It will consist of a low cost, simple to use instrument used together with test specific disposable cartridges. Each cartridge will test the sample for infection susceptibility against a panel of candidate antibiotics routinely used for that particular infection.