Cepheid Supports Inaugural Antibiotic Awareness Week

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD) today announced its support of World Antibiotic Awareness Week, a global campaign led by the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise awareness of the growing challenge posed by global antibiotic resistance.  As the world's most prevalent molecular diagnostic platform, Cepheid's GeneXpert® System is already supporting global efforts to diagnose infections quickly and accurately, enabling physicians to make appropriate clinical treatment decisions that preserve patient safety and limit improper antibiotic use.  To date, more than 9,200 GeneXpert Systems have been deployed globally in both developed and emerging market countries.

At the Sixty-eighth World Health Assembly in May 2015, escalating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) was identified as a global problem by the WHO, which endorsed a global action plan to address this challenge. Concurrently, the CDC identified antibiotic stewardship—the proper administration of the correct antibiotics only when needed—as the most important action in fighting antibiotic resistance.[1]  Antibiotic Awareness Week is expected to become an annual reminder of the importance of antibiotic stewardship programs.

According to leading antimicrobial resistance expert Professor Antoine Andremont of the Bichat-Claude Bernard Hopital in Paris, "rapid, easy-to-perform diagnostics have the potential to provide the critical information needed to tailor the right therapy for every patient, limiting unnecessary antibiotic use, deterring the emergence of more drug-resistant pathogens, and preserving the effectiveness of those drugs in the future."  Cepheid currently offers 23 fast diagnostics tests in its Xpert portfolio globally, targeting MRSA, C. difficile, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and a variety of other pathogens, making the GeneXpert System an invaluable tool for improving antibiotic stewardship and patient outcomes.

"Antibiotic stewardship has been of longstanding interest here at Cepheid, and we continue to develop Xpert tests and broader platform capabilities to support these critical antimicrobial resistance initiatives," said David Persing, M.D., Ph.D, Cepheid's Chief Medical and Technology Officer.  "For example, Cepheid is developing the capability to securely aggregate drug resistance results in real-time using innovative data management software.  The analytical capacity of this new software, which successfully collected data from nearly 2.5 million TB cases from 3 countries in initial pilot programs, has the potential to play a critical role in informing antimicrobial public policymaking for WHO member countries and health partners."

For more information on Cepheid's entire menu of Xpert tests, visit www.cepheid.com.

About Cepheid

Based in Sunnyvale, California, Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD) is a leading molecular diagnostics company that is dedicated to improving healthcare by developing, manufacturing, and marketing accurate yet easy-to-use molecular systems and tests.  By automating highly complex and time-consuming manual procedures, the company's solutions deliver a better way for institutions of any size to perform sophisticated genetic testing for organisms and genetic-based diseases.  Through its strong molecular biology capabilities, the company is focusing on those applications where accurate, rapid, and actionable test results are needed most, such as managing infectious diseases and cancer. For more information, visit http://www.cepheid.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are not purely historical regarding Cepheid's or its management's intentions, beliefs, expectations and strategies for the future, including those relating to the scale and sustainability of future growth, future availability, performance, diagnostic utility and clinical efficacy of the GeneXpert tests, platform features, including new data management software features, the role of Cepheid's products in influencing public health and policy, the breadth and speed of test menu expansion, geographic expansion and market segment expansion.  Because such statements deal with future events, they are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from Cepheid's current expectations.  Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include risks and uncertainties such as those relating to: our success in increasing commercial and HBDC sales and the effectiveness of our sales personnel; the relative mix of commercial and HBDC sales; the performance and market acceptance of new products, including field performance; utilization of our tests by clinicians and future changes in medical practice and protocols; sufficient customer demand, customer confidence in product availability and available customer budgets for our customers; our ability to successfully and timely develop new products, complete clinical trials successfully and obtain regulatory clearances in a timely manner for new products; uncertainties related to the FDA regulatory and international regulatory processes; the level of testing at clinical customer sites, including for Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs); Cepheid's ability to successfully introduce and sell products in clinical markets other than HAIs; long sales cycles and variability in systems placements and reagent pull-through in Cepheid's HBDC program;  the rate of environmental biothreat testing conducted by the USPS, which will affect the amount of consumable products sold to the USPS; unforeseen supply, development and manufacturing problems; our ability to manage our inventory levels; our ability to successfully complete and bring on additional manufacturing lines; the potential need for additional intellectual property licenses for tests and other products and the terms of such licenses; Cepheid's reliance on distributors in some regions to market, sell and support its products; Cepheid's research and development budget; the occurrence of unforeseen expenditures, acquisitions or other transactions; costs associated with litigation; the impact of competitive products and pricing; Cepheid's ability to manage geographically-dispersed operations; and underlying regulatory, political and market conditions worldwide.  Readers should also refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors" in Cepheid's Annual Report on Form 10-K, its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and its other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

All forward-looking statements and reasons why results might differ included in this release are made as of the date of this press release, based on information currently available to Cepheid, and Cepheid assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement or reasons why results might differ.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/cdc_role.html

For Media & Investor Inquiries:
Jacquie Ross, CFA
Tel: (408) 400 8329
[email protected]

SOURCE Cepheid

Related Links

http://www.cepheid.com