10 June 2025
Astratus Limited, a healthcare technology company spun out from University of Reading research, is addressing the £3.6 billion global antibiotic susceptibility testing market.
The team has developed a fully customisable, ultra-high throughput, rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform that tests bugs in a patient sample to find the best antimicrobial to treat the patient’s infection.
The Astratus platform is expected to market in the UK in early 2026, delivering same day digitised results to accelerate targeted antimicrobial discovery and prescribing.
Antimicrobial resistance
Deaths attributed to antibiotic resistance are forecasted to reach a cumulative total of 39 million by 2050, that is 3 deaths every minute.
Antimicrobial resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, more than 20% of the antibiotic prescriptions issued to NHS patients are not effective against the bacteria causing an infection. And more than 25% of urine samples from patients with a suspected urinary tract infection contain bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
Slow, manual testing methods are partly responsible for driving inappropriate prescriptions, and infections are becoming harder to treat due to rising antimicrobial resistance. More than 5.2 million urine samples are tested in UK hospitals annually with 2.5 million bacterial samples also tested in UK veterinary laboratories.
Dr Oliver Hancox, CEO and co-founder of Astratus, said: "Our vision is to improve global access to rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing. Faster, personalised antimicrobial prescribing will help reduce the burden of antimicrobial resistance. We believe we can help patients to access the right treatment for their urinary tract infection faster”
Same-day results
Digitised same-day actionable results, direct-from-urine or from bacterial sample, are available 5 times faster using the Astratus platform than existing methods - under 6 hours compared to more than 2 to 3 days.
The modular design means that the platform can be scaled for a laboratory of any size, improving efficiency and productivity. It is possible to scale the platform to achieve 20 times higher throughput than current laboratory methods.
Astratus Limited was founded by a team of university researchers and lecturers: Dr Oliver Hancox, Ms Julie Hart, Dr Alexander Edwards and Dr Sarah Needs. Its research and development operations are housed in innovation space on the University of Reading Whiteknights campus.
The company supports the One Health Approach to reduce antimicrobial resistance. Whether used in human or animal health, the platform ensures clinicians can prescribe the right drug to treat the bug causing the infection, improving outcomes and saving lives.
As well as providing a platform for clinical antimicrobial susceptibility testing, the technology could be used by researchers and companies developing new antimicrobials, investigating biofilms, or searching for novel therapies.
Dr Sarah Needs, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Astratus, said: "Our technology represents a significant advancement in antimicrobial susceptibility testing. By dramatically cutting testing times and automating a process that is currently done manually, we are reducing both time and labour burdens experienced by microbiology laboratories”.
New analysis from Universities UK reveals that by 2028, around 27,000 new start-ups with a predicted turnover of approximately £10.8bn could be established at higher education institutions across the UK. The University of Reading is ranked in the top quintile for 'Working with businesses' according to the Knowledge Exchange Framework, meaning it is well placed to make a significant contribution to the predicted total.
Guy Hembury, Director of Knowledge Exchange, Commercialisation & Partnerships at the University of Reading, said: Our commercial spaces, innovation centres, and enterprise education are helping to nurture the next generation of spinouts that will power the UK economy. At Reading, we've created an ecosystem where ideas can flourish, from our world-leading research that generates around £270 million in private sector spillovers, to our enterprise education that equips students with the skills they need to succeed."
Image by NIAID's Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML), licensed under CC BY 2.0
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