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Presymptom Health machine-learning-derived blood tests investigate the patient – rather than the pathogen – allowing us to rule out infection or sepsis. Existing technologies are slow (up to 3 days to result) and fail to distinguish pathogenicity from colonization. Presymptom Health is developing a patented set of assays to support early diagnosis and enhanced antibiotic stewardship to combat the Anti Microbial Resistance (AMR) crisis. Trained from blood samples collected over 15 years, these samples included thousands of patients, some of whom developed infections and sepsis. The first product, InfectiClear®, will be available from 2025.

Leukocyte ImmunoTest™(LIT™) is a ten-minute finger-prick point-of-care (POC) blood-test that assesses host-response to infection through measurement of real-time neutrophil function (RTNF). The patented assay has been shown to be superior to current biomarkers for several clinical applications, including i.) sepsis, where LIT is more responsive for monitoring clinical progression compared with current biomarkers such as neutrophil-count or C-reactive-protein (CRP), and ii.) cancer, where risk-stratification and early detection of metastatic-cancer have been demonstrated in three clinical trials. With a portable handheld luminometer (reader) and AI-enabled software incorporating both LIT-scores and conventional markers, LIT will lead to radically improved outcomes for sepsis patients.

SimCells are genome-free, non-replicating bacterial cells exhibiting all the important surface features of living cells, but which cannot grow or divide. This makes them ideal candidates for whole-cell vaccines against pathogenic bacteria. Oxford SimCell Ltd. is developing SimCell-based vaccines against high-priority pathogens, especially antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus.

Traditional bacterial inactivation methods – including heat, chemicals, or radiation – damage important cell-surface antigens, whereas SimCells present all antigens in their native conformation and context. SimCell vaccines are effective in preclinical in vivo models, and represent a tool for reducing incidence of bacterial infection and combatting the global rise of AMR.