Day Zero Diagnostics Announces Completion of $16M Financing Round

This latest financing brings the total raised by Day Zero Diagnostics to $49M in venture capital funding and over $18M in non-dilutive funding.

BOSTON – September 20, 2023 – Day Zero Diagnostics Inc. (DZD), an infectious disease diagnostics company harnessing the power of whole-genome sequencing and AI to combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections, announced today the recent completion of a $16M round of financing. This latest financing brings the total raised by Day Zero Diagnostics to $49M in venture capital funding and over $18M in non-dilutive funding.

“This funding is a strong vote of confidence in Day Zero Diagnostics’ potential to use rapid sequencing and AI to disrupt microbiology lab diagnostics,” said Jong Lee, CEO and co-founder of Day Zero Diagnostics. “DZD is focused on bringing an FDA-cleared diagnostic to market that will deliver the ‘holy grail’ of infectious disease diagnostics – same day organism identification and antimicrobial susceptibility profiling directly from clinical samples, and our investors share our belief in the game changing nature of our technology.”

DZD is developing a sequencing-based diagnostic that can identify a comprehensive range of bacterial and fungal pathogens and determine their antimicrobial susceptibility in less than 8 hours. Current approaches to antimicrobial resistance testing take days, a time delay associated with an 8% increase in death per hour(1). According to the CDC, antimicrobial resistance is associated with nearly 5 million deaths annually worldwide.

“No other company has solved the scientific and technical challenges required to make rapid ID and antimicrobial susceptibility profiling possible in such a short time,” said Dr. Douglas Kwon, an infectious disease physician at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a cofounder of the company. “Physicians understand that the real enemy in treating serious systemic infections is time, and we need reliable, comprehensive diagnostic information to inform clinical decision making far sooner than is possible today.”

DZD will use the recent funding to complete development of an improved Blood2Bac™ sample prep protocol, which can capture fungi as well as bacteria, using smaller sample volumes, and at substantially lower cost. The funding will also accelerate development of a prototype for the commercial system, including both the hardware system and the Keynome® family of cloud-based AI algorithms that provides high accuracy organism ID and antimicrobial susceptibility profiling. Using the diagnostic, hospitals will be able to reduce patient length of stay; the overuse of toxic, expensive, and ineffective antibiotics; and most importantly, save lives.

About Antimicrobial Resistance
Antimicrobial resistance, a term that includes bacterial resistance to antibiotics as well as fungal resistance, is an escalating global crisis. Due to excessive use of antibiotics, pathogens are developing resistance to drugs that were previously effective at rates outpacing the development of new antibiotics. The World Health Organization lists AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity, associated with the deaths of 4.95 million people in 2019 and a potential economic impact of $100 trillion by 2050(2).

Infections due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria are more dangerous for patients and more difficult and expensive to treat. They often require extended hospital stays, additional follow-up doctor visits, and more costly and toxic alternative treatments. As drug-resistant bacteria become more common, so will deaths from life-threatening infections like sepsis, which is the body’s unregulated immune response to a severe bloodstream infection.

Early and effective treatment of antibiotic resistant infections has been proven to save lives. However, current technologies do not provide actionable information quickly enough to enable early, targeted antibiotic treatment and they take days to return results. In up to 50% of cases of serious blood stream infections, cultures fail to grow.

About Day Zero Diagnostics
Day Zero Diagnostics, Inc., based in Boston, is pioneering a new class of infectious disease diagnostics using whole-genome sequencing and artificial intelligence to revolutionize how the world fights the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. The company’s mission is to change the way infectious diseases are diagnosed and treated by rapidly identifying both the species and the antimicrobial susceptibility profile of severe infections directly from a clinical sample without the need for a culture. Day Zero also offers a family of lab services under the epiXact® brand that utilize proprietary technologies to assist healthcare organizations manage infection outbreaks, investigate organisms of interest, and make high-impact decisions. Day Zero Diagnostics was founded in 2016 by a team of clinicians and scientists from Harvard University and the Massachusetts General Hospital. The company has been recognized as a leading innovator by CARB-X, UCSF Health, American Association of Clinical Chemistry, MedTech Innovator, TedMed Hive, HealthTech Arkansas, and MassChallenge HealthTech. Follow DZD on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.

Media contact:

Helen Shik
Shik Communications
helen@shikcommunications.com
617-510-4373

1. Kumar A, et. al. Duration of hypotension before initiation of effective antimicrobial therapy
is the critical determinant of survival in human septic shock. Crit Care Med. 2006
Jun;34(6):1589-96

2. https://asm.org/getmedia/5f665383-881a-493d-ae05-04a960a25548/AMR-Policy-Paper2023.pdF

Acknowledgement and disclaimer:
Research reported in this press release is supported by CARB-X. CARB-X’s funding for this project is provided in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority; under agreement number: 75A50122C00028, and by awards from Wellcome (WT224842) and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The content of this press release is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of CARB-X or any of its funders.