Wednesday, 14 October 2026 08:05 AM
Awards
Project Compass will evaluate TriVerity® as a rapid platform to help predict which patients with severe infection or suspected sepsis may benefit from corticosteroid therapy
SUNNYVALE, CA / ACCESS Newswire / October 14, 2026 / Inflammatix, Inc., a leader in precision diagnostics for acute infection, today announced that it has been awarded a $1 million development contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), within the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), administered through VITAL - a BARDA Accelerator Network Hub managed by Start2 Group. As part of BARDA's Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) Type to Treat Program, VITAL's TyPe funding opportunity will support "Project Compass," a project to evaluate the company's FDA-cleared TriVerity® host-response test as a platform for predicting corticosteroid responsiveness in patients with severe infections and suspected sepsis.
Sepsis and severe infections remain among the most difficult conditions to treat because patients who appear similar clinically may have profoundly different underlying immune responses. Corticosteroids, including dexamethasone and hydrocortisone, are widely available and commonly used in severe infection, septic shock, viral pneumonia, and pandemic response settings. However, clinical benefit can vary significantly by patient, and clinicians currently lack a rapid, actionable tool to help determine which patients are most likely to benefit from immune-modulating therapy and which patients may be harmed.
TriVerity® takes a fundamentally different approach by reading the body's immune response directly. The test measures 29 host mRNAs from whole blood on the Myrna™ instrument and generates three actionable scores in approximately 30 minutes: likelihood of bacterial infection, likelihood of viral infection, and illness severity. Today, TriVerity® is intended to support earlier, more confident diagnosis and triage decisions for adult emergency department patients with suspected acute infection or sepsis. Project Compass will explore whether the same host-response signal can also help guide therapeutic decision-making.
"Inflammatix was founded on a simple belief: the body often knows more about disease than we can currently see," said Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Inflammatix. "With Project Compass, we are asking an important next question: can we use that immune signal not only to understand infection and severity earlier, but also to help determine which therapy is right for which patient? If successful, this work could move sepsis care beyond broad, one-size-fits-all treatment and toward real-time, host-response-guided precision medicine."
Project Compass builds on prior retrospective analyses of independent sepsis clinical trial datasets suggesting that patients in TriVerity's highest Illness Severity band may experience clinical benefit from corticosteroid therapy, while patients in lower severity bands may not benefit and may potentially be harmed. The new project will further test this hypothesis using well-characterized patient cohorts, both on-device using the FDA-cleared Myrna platform and in silico using locked TriVerity® algorithms.
"For decades, sepsis trials have struggled because they often enroll patients under a single clinical label, even though the biology driving disease progression and treatment response can be very different," said Purvesh Khatri, PhD, co-founder and Chief Scientist of Inflammatix and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. "TriVerity® reads the immune response directly. By evaluating whether that signal can identify patients more likely to respond to corticosteroids, we have the opportunity to help clinicians treat the biology in front of them rather than relying only on symptoms, pathogen detection, or population averages. Project Compass is a first step toward bringing precision immunology to the point of care."
The award is part of BARDA's Type to Treat Program, which seeks to advance patient subtyping technologies that can help predict treatment benefit, improve therapeutic efficacy, and support medical countermeasure development for national health security needs. By validating a new therapeutic-response use case on an existing FDA-cleared platform, Project Compass could help establish TriVerity® as a scalable host-response platform for treatment stratification relevant across severe infection, emerging infectious diseases, pandemic response, and other BARDA mission areas.
"TriVerity® was designed to help clinicians win the first decision in acute infection," added Sweeney. "This award supports the next step in that vision: using the immune system's real-time signal to help clinicians choose not only the right level of care, but potentially the right treatment strategy at the right moment."
Use of TriVerity® to predict response to corticosteroid therapy is investigational and has not been cleared or approved by the FDA.
About the TriVerity® Test System
The TriVerity® Test System ("TriVerity") is Inflammatix's flagship in vitro diagnostic test and includes the proprietary, disposable TriVerity® cartridge and the Myrna™ instrument. TriVerity® incorporates a panel of 29 patient messenger RNAs to rapidly interpret the body's immune response to infection using machine learning-derived algorithms.
TriVerity® provides the likelihood of bacterial infection, viral infection, and illness severity in adult patients with suspected acute infection or sepsis who present to emergency departments. Results are delivered in approximately 30 minutes, helping guide diagnosis and triage in the timeframe emergency department providers need and expect. TriVerity® is designed to support more confident care decisions, which could influence antimicrobial therapy, focused workups with judicious laboratory and imaging orders, and patient admission or discharge disposition.
TriVerity® was developed based on research conducted at Stanford University by co-founders Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD, and Purvesh Khatri, PhD. Inflammatix holds exclusive rights to the core intellectual property from Stanford University.
About Inflammatix
Inflammatix, Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California, is redefining molecular diagnostics by leveraging host-response biology, immunology, machine learning, and advanced data science to generate accurate, actionable results. Founded on research from Stanford University, Inflammatix is developing rapid diagnostics that give clinicians an earlier, clearer picture of the immune response, supporting more confident decisions across acute infection, sepsis, and broader immune-driven disease.
For more information, visit www.inflammatix.com and follow @Inflammatix_Inc on LinkedIn and X.
About VITAL
VITAL is a BARDA Accelerator Network Hub dedicated to advancing the development of innovative therapeutic and vaccine platforms that address critical gaps in health security. By supporting innovators through every stage - from concept to clinic - VITAL helps translate breakthrough science into life-saving solutions aligned with BARDA's mission to promote health security innovation. VITAL is managed and operated by Start2 Group.
Government Support Acknowledgment
This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, through the VITAL Hub, under award number 75A50124C00012.2024-TyPe.01.
The views expressed are those of Inflammatix and do not necessarily represent the official views of HHS, ASPR, BARDA, VITAL, or the U.S. Government. Reference to any specific commercial product, process, or service does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the U.S. Government.
Media Contact
Ashley Scholz
Inflammatix, Inc.
[email protected]
(520) 730-4226
SOURCE: Inflammatix