Garmatex & Diagnomics to control pathogens in healthcare
December 06, 2014 - United States Of America
Garmatex Technologies has partnered Diagnomics to combine their expertise and resources to develop leading-edge healthcare scrubs and linens.
The five-year agreement will use advanced, anti-microbial fabric technologies to limit pathogen transference of bacteria and fungi that can contaminate healthcare environments.
Garmatex Technologies is a developer of scientifically-engineered fabric technologies, while, Diagnomics Inc is a biotech company that provides healthcare solutions from personal genomics.
The goal of developing these products is to save lives and healthcare venue expenses, by preventing the unnecessary spread of dangerous hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and other ailments.
As per Columbia University, around two million US patients suffer from HAIs and nearly 90,000 are estimated to die annually, with the overall cost of HAIs ranging from $28 to $45 billion per year.
Clinical testing of Garmatex’s fabric technologies will be conducted through Diagnomics’ Eone-Diagnomics Genome Center, a biotech-healthcare facility in Songdong, South Korea.
The testing will prove the efficacy of Garmatex's fabric technologies for the protection from, or treatment of, certain infections.
The healthcare scrubs and linens developed by Garmatex and Diagnomics will feature Garmatex’s proprietary anti-microbial technology, Bact-Out.
“Bact-Out is a revolutionary, natural anti-microbial treatment that has a bacterial and fungal reduction rate of 99.9 per cent after more than 50 washes,” Garmatex informs.
Dr Stefan Gruenwald, co-founder at Diagnomics says, “We have become experts in diagnosing and treating disease, but we are still at the mercy of these bacteria and fungi.”
“The loss of life and the cost is exorbitant, so we are looking forward to working with Garmatex to prevent further pathogen transference in the future,” he added.
Garmatex and Diagnomics are working to address this issue by developing a complete portfolio of healthcare fabric technologies for commercialization.
Diagnomics has agreed to make a significant strategic investment into Garmatex in return for the exclusive rights to sell the products in South Korea.
The key goal for both companies is to optimize the technology and provide patients and hospitals with a more sustainable and affordable alternative for preventing HAIs and other ailments.
Garmatex CEO, Martin Doane said, “No one else is taking such a rigorous, pioneering approach – marrying cutting-edge textile technology with world-class, genomics-level medical science.”
He adds, “We recently toured the lab and were blown away by the scientific sophistication of the facility and expertise of the researchers and technicians working there.” (AR)