Posted December 9, 2014

 

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Garmatex Technologies, Inc., a leading inventor of performance fabric and apparel solution-focused technologies, has signed a letter of intent for a five-year term with Diagnomics Inc., a biotech company that provides next-generation healthcare solutions from personal genomics.

 

The letter sets out, among other things, the intent of the two companies to combine their expertise and resources to develop leading-edge healthcare scrubs and linens that will use advanced, antimicrobial fabric technologies to limit pathogen transference of bacteria and fungi that can contaminate healthcare environments.

 

The goal of developing these products is to save lives and healthcare venue expenses by preventing the unnecessary spread of dangerous hospital-acquired infections other ailments. At present, these infections affect millions of patients worldwide each year. According to Columbia University, about 2 million patients suffer from these infections in the U.S., and nearly 90,000 are estimated to die annually. The overall cost of these infections to U.S. hospitals ranges from $28 billion to $45 billion per year.

 

Clinical testing of Garmatex's fabric technologies will be conducted through Diagnomics' Eone-Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC), a biotech-healthcare facility in Songdong, South Korea, to 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 antimicrobial technology, Bact-Out®, a revolutionary, natural anti-microbial treatment that has a bacterial and fungal reduction rate of 99.9 percent after more than 50 washes.

 

"We have become experts in diagnosing and treating disease, but we are still at the mercy of these bacteria and fungi,” said Dr. Stefan Gruenwald, co-founder and CTO of San Diego-based Diagnomics. “The loss of life and the cost is exorbitant. We're looking forward to working with Garmatex to prevent further pathogen transference in the future."

 

Garmatex and Diagnomics are working to address this issue by developing a complete portfolio of healthcare fabric technologies for commercialization, to prevent further spreading of hospital-acquired infections and pathogens. Diagnomics has agreed to make a significant strategic investment into Garmatex in return for the exclusive rights to sell the products in South Korea, and Dr. Gruenwald will be joining Garmatex as an expert advisor to help direct Garmatex's entrance and growth within the healthcare market. 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 these infections and other ailments. 

 

"We believe our relationship with Diagnomics is unique among textile innovation companies,” said Martin Doane, Garmatex's CEO and president. “No one else is taking such a rigorous, pioneering approach – marrying cutting-edge textile technology with world-class, genomics-level medical science. We expect to begin clinical tests of our fabrics at the Eone-Diagnomics Genome Center in early 2015. 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."