Company led by Former UMCP and National Institute of Standards and Technology Faculty Member Drastically Cuts Detection Time for Salmonella and E. coli in Food
The University System of Maryland (USM) Maryland Momentum Fund has invested $150,000 in College Park, Md.-based pathOtrak, a company that has developed a rapid food test for salmonella and E. coli in food.
The investment closes out pathOtrak’s $1.2 million seed round, along with a $200,000 investment from a global life sciences company with a food safety division and $310,000 from the Dingman Center Angels.
The Momentum Fund continues to invest in companies affiliated with the USM despite the COVID-19 pandemic and encourages applications through the Fund website at https://momentum.usmd.edu.
pathOtrak offers a sample-prep kit called Next Generation Enrichment, which uses a new microfiltration technology to drastically expedite the detection of both salmonella and E. coli in food. pathOtrak’s technology reduces food testing time from 1-2 days to five hours. This enables producers to release product one day earlier, helping the food industry better balance shelf life, profit, and food safety.
About 5 million cases of bacterial food poisoning occur each year in the U.S., resulting in illness, death, and over $55 billion in combined financial losses. Time from farm to table is critical, as illustrated in instances such as the recent romaine lettuce and Chipotle E. coli outbreaks.
“pathOtrak’s mission is to eliminate food-safety risks and gaps in the food industry by delivering the right technologies at the right price, saving producers cost and testing labs time,” said pathOtrak Founder and Chief Executive Officer Javier Atencia, PhD. “Our technology aims to increase shelf life, reduce food waste, and, most importantly, save lives. We are excited to have the Momentum Fund close our seed round at a moment when we are about to send our first product for food-safety accreditation. We are ready and eager to disrupt the food industry by simplifying operations that still rely on lengthy food-safety tests.”
“Vendors of rapid food-safety detection include multi-billion dollar companies such as 3M, Neogen, Biomerieux, Bio-Rad and Hygiena,” said Claire Broido Johnson, Managing Director of the Momentum Fund. “As of now, all of them use a traditional enrichment pathogen detection process, the key step that pathOtrak disrupts. If pathOtrak’s technology can reduce full pathogen detection time, it would offer a key strategic and competitive advantage to a company employing the test.”
pathOtrak joined the Mtech Ventures incubator at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) in 2018. The company is also a graduate of both the DC I-Corps and NSF I-Corps programs.
Click here to read more from the Baltimore CityBizList