Nexsen has taken a significant step toward expanding its impact in global healthcare, securing a $500,000 non-dilutive Federal Government grant to extend its Group B Streptococcus (GBS) rapid diagnostic technology into neonatal care.
The funding, awarded to RMIT University under the Commonwealth’s highly competitive Australia’s Economic Accelerator (AEA) Ignite program, supports a collaborative project titled 'Transforming Neonatal Care with a Rapid Diagnostic for Group B Streptococcus (GBS)'. Nexsen is participating as the industry commercialisation partner, with the total project valued at more than $1 million.
The initiative will enable Nexsen’s existing maternal GBS Rapid Sensor technology to be customised for use in newborns, creating a new point-of-care diagnostic that rapidly detects GBS infections in neonates. This represents a major advance in addressing a critical unmet need in neonatal care, where delayed diagnosis can lead to severe complications, including sepsis, long-term neurodevelopmental impairment, and death.
Globally, GBS remains one of the leading causes of serious infection in newborns. In 2020 alone, an estimated 232,000 infants developed invasive GBS disease, resulting in approximately 92,000 deaths and stillbirths. Survivors often face lifelong health challenges. By enabling rapid, bedside diagnosis in newborns, Nexsen’s technology has the potential to significantly improve clinical outcomes while also reducing the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics.
The expansion into neonatal testing also unlocks a substantially larger commercial opportunity for Nexsen. With an estimated 132 million births worldwide in 2024, the ability to screen infants at or shortly after birth represents a meaningful addition to the company’s addressable market, complementing its existing maternal screening focus.
Over the next year, researchers from Nexsen and RMIT University will work to deliver a neonatal GBS diagnostic device with validated analytical performance and pilot clinical data. Beyond this specific application, the project will also demonstrate the scalability of Nexsen’s diagnostic platform, showing how it can be efficiently adapted to support additional biomarker-based diagnostics across multiple clinical settings.
Nexsen Managing Director Mark Muzzin said the grant supports a strategically important extension of the company’s GBS program. He noted that neonatal care is a setting where rapid, accurate diagnostics can have a direct, immediate impact on patient outcomes. The collaboration with RMIT allows Nexsen to broaden the clinical utility of its technology while advancing a global testing opportunity with minimal capital outlay.
Distinguished Professor Vipul Bansal, Director of RMIT’s Sir Ian Potter NanoBioSensing Facility and Nexsen’s Chief Innovation Officer, highlighted that selection under the AEA Ignite program reflects the translational readiness of Nexsen’s platform and the strength of the long-standing collaboration between the two organisations. He said the project demonstrates how established platform capabilities can be leveraged efficiently to deliver new, high-impact diagnostic applications.
From a funding perspective, the project structure allows Nexsen to accelerate development while preserving capital. Of the total $1.03 million project value, the Commonwealth is contributing $500,000, with Nexsen providing $100,000 in cash and $100,000 in-kind support, and RMIT contributing $329,538 in-kind.
Selection under the AEA Ignite program also underscores the relevance of Nexsen’s technology to Australia’s advanced manufacturing priorities, highlighting government support for domestically developed medical technologies with strong potential for scalable clinical and commercial deployment.