The company, founded in 2022 as a spin-out of Uppsala University, will use the funding for early concept and feasibility work, including sample preparation, antimicrobial-resistance detection and a full product-development roadmap. The platform builds on Readily’s padlock-probe molecular technology, originally developed for respiratory infections and now redirected to STIs, delivering a lab-quality result at the point of care without a central laboratory.

The test is also designed to detect genetic markers of antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea, which the World Health Organization lists as an urgent resistance threat — letting clinicians pick the right antibiotic upfront and helping preserve treatments that still work. The project targets primary care, family planning and HIV-prevention settings in low- and middle-income countries, where symptom-based treatment remains common because accurate testing is often too slow, costly or unavailable.

CEO Liza Löf commented: “A diagnosis should not depend on where you happen to live. This grant from the Gates Foundation lets us show that an accurate STI test can also be simple and affordable enough to use anywhere.”