Ondine Biomedical Inc Announces Steriwave in First Australian Hospital

Mater Hospital, North Sydney has become the first Australian hospital to use Ondine Biomedical's award-winning light-activated antimicrobial technology

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 22, 2024 / Ondine Biomedical Inc. (LSE:OBI), the Canadian life sciences company pioneering light-activated antimicrobial treatments, announces that Mater Hospital, North Sydney, a private hospital in New South Wales, has become the first Australian hospital to start using its light-activated antimicrobial Steriwave® technology to prevent the spread of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Mater Hospital, located in North Sydney and founded in 1906, is part of St. Vincent's Health Australia Group, Australia's largest not-for-profit provider of health and aged care services.

Medical Oncologist, Professor Frances Boyle AM, Director of the Patricia Ritchie Centre for Cancer Care and Research at Mater Hospital and Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Sydney, said: "We are very pleased to be the first hospital in Australia to have the Steriwave nasal decolonization system. The pathogens patients carry have long been known to cause hospital-acquired infections, especially for the weak and immunocompromised. Having a rapid non-antibiotic approach to decolonizing the nose - a major source of infection transmission - is a benefit to our patients."

Orthopaedic Spine Surgeon Dr John Street, Director of the Integrated Ambulatory Spine Program at Vancouver Coastal Health and upcoming President of the Canadian Spine Society, was a keynote speaker at the recent 2024 Spine Society of Australia 35th Annual Scientific Meeting that was held in Sydney on April 5-7^th, 2024. Dr Street presented the results of his team's 14-year study evaluating Steriwave's effect on SSIs following spine surgery at Vancouver General Hospital ("VGH"), concluding that Steriwave nasal photodisinfection should be part of routine use and recommended it as standard of care for all elective and emergent spine surgeries.

The VGH research involved 13,493 patients and demonstrated a 66.5% reduction (7.98% vs 2.67%, p<0.001) in surgical site infections (SSIs) following spine surgery when Ondine's Steriwave nasal photodisinfection (nPDT) was implemented in the universal pre-surgical infection prevention protocol. The researchers also found average net annual cost saving of $2.49 million, a saving of over $2,400 per spine surgery patient, post rollout.

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About Ondine Biomedical Inc.

Ondine Biomedical Inc. is a Canadian life sciences company and leader innovating light-activated antimicrobial therapies (also known as 'photodisinfection'). Ondine has a pipeline of investigational products, based on its proprietary photodisinfection technology, in various stages of development.

Ondine's nasal photodisinfection system has a CE mark in Europe and the UK and is approved in Canada and several other countries under the name Steriwave®. In the US, it has been granted Qualified Infectious Disease Product designation and Fast Track status by the FDA and is currently undergoing clinical trials for regulatory approval. Products beyond nasal photodisinfection include therapies for a variety of medical indications such as chronic sinusitis, ventilator-associated pneumonia, burns, and many other indications.

About Steriwave®

Ondine's Steriwave® nasal photodisinfection system is a patented technology using a proprietary light-activated antimicrobial (photosensitizer) to destroy bacteria, viruses, and fungi colonizing the nose. The photodisinfection treatment is carried out by a trained healthcare professional and is an easy to use, painless, two-step process. The photosensitizer is applied to each nostril using a nasal swab, followed by illumination of the area with a specific wavelength of red laser light for less than five minutes. The light activates the photosensitizer, causing an oxidative burst that is lethal to all types of pathogens without causing long-term adverse effects on the nasal microbiome. A key benefit of this approach-unlike with antibiotics, which have resistance rates reported as high as 81%^[1]-is that pathogens do not develop resistance to the therapy.

Nasal decolonization is recommended in the 2016 WHO Global guidelines for the prevention of surgical site infections,^[2] and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) guidelines, published in May 2023, recommend nasal decolonization for major surgical procedures.^[3]

^[1] Poovelikunnel T, Gethin G, Humphreys H. Mupirocin resistance: clinical implications and potential alternatives for the eradication of MRSA. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2015;70(10):2681-2692. doi:10.1093/jac/dkv169

^[2] https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/integrated-health-services-(ihs)/ssi/fact-sheet-staphylococcus-web.pdf?sfvrsn=7e7266ed_2

^[3] Calderwood MS, Anderson DJ, Bratzler DW, et al. Strategies to prevent surgical site infections in acute-care hospitals: 2022 Update. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2023;44(5):695-720. doi:10.1017/ice.2023.67

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SOURCE: Ondine Biomedical Inc.