Twenty-five years of science. One unsolved problem.
MicrobeDX grew out of research begun in 2001 to shorten the wait for bacterial identification and antibiotic susceptibility results. The company now operates in Saskatoon, where its assays have been evaluated on patient specimens. The assays have moved to the Luminex LX200 for platform-specific validation. A prospective clinical study is proposed to measure effects on treatment and hospital resource use.
Research began with childhood urinary infections.
The research began in 2001 with a clinical problem: childhood urinary infections that no longer responded to the usual antibiotics. Culture results took days, delaying the information needed to select targeted treatment.
Identify the bacteria directly. Measure the antibiotic response in hours.
The research programme set out to shorten that delay: detect the bacteria in a specimen by their ribosomal RNA, without waiting for a culture, and measure their response to antibiotics the same day. Local donors funded the first work. The National Institutes of Health funded what followed, through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
A patented chemistry, validated on real specimens.
Over more than a decade the research programme developed and patented the ribosomal-RNA identification and phenotypic susceptibility methods MicrobeDX uses today, tested them on thousands of bacterial isolates, and evaluated the identification and susceptibility assays on 225 urine specimens in a technical validation study.
Funding figures are drawn from public records and company materials and are stated conservatively; invested-capital totals are management-reported and have not been independently verified.
Formed to take the science out of the laboratory.
NIH small-business research award
The National Institutes of Health separately funded MicrobeDX's UroLogic programme through its Small Business Innovation Research scheme, to design and test an automated identification and susceptibility system for urine specimens from outpatients with suspected urinary tract infection.
NIH SBIR award per public NIH listings.
A Saskatchewan starting point.
Saskatchewan helped lay the foundations of Canada's Medicare system. MicrobeDX's work in Saskatoon asks a practical question about care today: how much could a faster answer change the treatment of a bacterial infection?
In 2020 MicrobeDX moved its operations to Saskatoon. Its assays were evaluated on patient specimens at Royal University Hospital, alongside conventional laboratory methods.
Saskatchewan's contribution to MedicareThree years in a hospital laboratory.
More than 1,400 urine samples, collected in 2021 and 2022, and 226 positive blood cultures were run by laboratory staff over a three-year programme. It established that the chemistry works on real patient specimens and measured how fast.
A cleared instrument to run it on.
The programme's legacy instrument proved unreliable. The assays have since been moved to the Luminex LX200, an analyser already cleared for clinical laboratory use and installed in many laboratories. Assay performance on the new platform is the subject of the validation work now under way.
Measure what the speed is worth.
A prospective emergency-department study is proposed to measure what a same-shift answer changes for treatment, admissions, bed-days and cost. Platform validation and the regulatory pathway run alongside it.
Analytical performance under study conditions on the legacy instrument, not a clinical outcome claim. MicrobeDX's assays are investigational and not licensed by Health Canada for routine clinical use.
Patents granted in Europe and Israel, with applications pending in North America and Europe.
The estate covers the use of ribosomal RNA to identify bacteria and to measure their growth, the sample-preparation chemistry, the assay conditions, and the methods for rapid susceptibility testing.
Patent status per public registers as at July 2026.
Led by an investor who has backed the company with his own capital.
Michael Churchill
Chief Executive OfficerMichael Churchill leads MicrobeDX and is its largest individual investor. He joined the company as Chief Financial Officer and has raised the private capital that has carried the technology from research to clinical evaluation.
A merchant banker and investor by background, he has held senior management and board roles in private equity, biotechnology and public companies, and has taken companies through initial public offerings, reverse takeovers, mergers and acquisitions and private sales. He was a director of St Andrew Goldfields and chaired its audit committee, and served on the board of Kirkland Lake Gold following the two companies' combination in 2016.
Corporate structure, regulatory status and quality practice.
Corporate
MicrobeDX, Inc. is a Delaware corporation with operations in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Regulatory
MicrobeDX's assays are investigational and are not licensed by Health Canada for routine clinical use. The company is defining the applicable regulatory pathway with its advisers and states no commercial availability date.
Quality
Platform-specific validation on the Luminex LX200 is planned under a quality-management framework, with laboratory procedures formalized as standard operating procedures.
Claims
Every performance figure on this site is labelled with where it came from. MicrobeDX makes no claim about patient outcomes, bed-days or cost savings attributable to its own assays until a study has measured them.