NEW ORLEANS (press release) – Chosen Diagnostics is pleased to announce the receipt of a $2.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for the completion of the group’s NECDetect prototype to identify necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in preterm infants and for the initiation of corresponding clinical trials.
A preterm-infant inflammatory disease, necrotizing enterocolitis is a disease of the gastrointestinal tract affecting 6,000 infants in the United States annually. NEC contributes to a 50% mortality rate in affected infants and those who survive usually see long-term health complications throughout their lives.
“This grant now makes it possible for our NECDetect prototype to be completed and to set the stage for potential rollout nationwide,” stated Chosen Diagnostics CEO Sunyoung Kim, Ph.D. She continued, “we couldn’t be happier with the recognition and financial support from the National Institutes of Health for this important next step. It will allow us to help physicians detect and more readily treat affected preterm infants who, without this technology, currently only have a 50% chance of making it home from the hospital.”
This New Orleans-based biotech company’s technology could have an outsized healthcare impact in Louisiana given that the state consistently exceeds the national average for premature births. As Dr. Kim explained, “neonatologists in the area approached me with this chronic problem in our preterm infant population locally and wanted us to create a solution. Knowing the importance of addressing diseases in the intestinal tract before they create complications elsewhere in the body, I embraced this work as an opportunity to save lives in our infant population.” Rebecca Buckley, Ph.D. and COO of Chosen Diagnostics added, “once we roll out the NECDetect prototype to Louisiana-based healthcare settings, our goal is to make this technology available regionally, nationally and internationally. Our hope is that our test will positively impact the health of more premature babies so that all can go home from the hospital.”
Chosen Diagnostics is a spin-out company from the LSU Health Sciences Center. The spin-out entity is a current tenant at the New Orleans Bio Innovation Center, a non-profit incubator for innovators focused on life science technologies.
For more information on Chosen Diagnostics, please visit, www.ChosenDiagnostics.com.
