Dr. Alexander Sundermann Joins Next Gen Diagnostics as Its Director of Infection Prevention Services

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., July 9, 2024 (Newswire.com) - Next Gen Diagnostics announces that Dr. Alexander Sundermann of the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology has joined NGD as its Director of Infection Prevention Services. The part-time position will enable Dr. Sundermann to continue his research on the use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to detect and curtail transmission of infection. Along with Dr. Lee Harrison, Director of the Center for Genomic Epidemiology and Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Pitt, Dr. Sundermann is widely recognized to be a leading figure in the application of prospective sequencing as a means of detection of transmission in hospitals in the United States.  

“Alex is joining NGD just as we begin to offer NGD’s integrated sequencing and bioinformatic systems to hospitals and public health laboratories in the US,” said Dr. Paul A. Rhodes, NGD’s founder and CEO. “With the body of distinguished research that he and Dr. Harrison have published^1,2, Alex is uniquely qualified to open a dialog with leaders in infection prevention about the power of prospective WGS as a means to detect transmission of infection and track the spread of pathogens and their resistance determinants. Alex understands the practicalities of implementation, including the need to quantify net financial benefit to the hospital and to payers, to leverage the low cost and low hands-on time enabled by NGD’s automated sample preparation and bioinformatics systems.”

NGD and its partners have utilized prospective sequencing to detect transmission of infection since 2018, with a series of publications documenting the impact (catching and stopping an ongoing outbreak³) and accuracy (comparison of the NGD and Sanger Institute transmission detection bioinformatic systems⁴) of its bioinformatic systems. NGD has recently⁵, in partnership with Vanderbilt, demonstrated the use of WGS to detect transmission in a neonatal intensive care ward, adding to the growing literature confirming that prospective WGS is indispensable for the detection of transmission, providing guidance to the infection control teams charged with curtailing it. The NGD100 sample preparation system, launched in June at ASM Microbe 2024, completes the solution by including high-throughput low cost sample preparation required for practical implementation.

“My colleagues and I at Pitt, working very closely with the infection prevention team at UPMC, have developed and successfully tested the implementation of WGS-based surveillance for infection prevention and quantified its positive impact on both hospital operations and patient safety,” noted Dr. Sundermann. “I have wanted to be able to share this experience with hospitals and public health laboratories around the United States, and assist in putting WGS-based infection prevention systems in place. NGD’s automated sequencing and bioinformatics systems enable the consideration of routine bacterial WGS in hospital settings, with what my colleagues and I believe will be enormously beneficial impact to the US healthcare system.”

1 Sundermann et al, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2022[EL11] 
2 Sundermann et al, Antimicrobial Stewardship & Hospital Epidemiology, 2022[EL12] 
3 Brown et al, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 2019
4 Raven et al, mSphere, 2022
5 Gaston et al, ASM Microbe Abstract 2024

About Next Gen Diagnostics

NGD, founded by Dr. Paul A. Rhodes along with Sanger Institute group leaders in Cambridge, has built and validated world-leading automation of pathogen bioinformatics enabling high throughput low cost clinical use of WGS. In addition, NGD holds the exclusive rights to a unique microfluidic sample preparation system for clinical and commercial applications of pathogen WGS. NGD offers a high volume turn-key sequencing services to enable detection of transmission in hospitals, and is working with leading collaborators in the US, Europe and Israel to be among the first to bring WGS-based regulated diagnostics to patient care. NGD is based in the US, with subsidiaries based in Cambridge, UK and in Israel.

For press inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

 [EL11]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34791136
 [EL12]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36483409

Source: Next Gen Diagnostics