Automated point-of-care precision diagnostics of sepsis (SEPTICISION)

The combination of detecting sepsis-causing bacteria and measuring the concentration of key inflammation biomarkers at the point of care will offer a rapid, personalized and evidence-based perspective in the clinical diagnosis and treatment of sepsis.

Sepsis is the body's extreme response to an infection, leading to damage of the body’s own tissues. It happens when an infection triggers a chain reaction throughout the body and counts ~1.3 million cases/year in Europe and USA. It is treatable, but can lead to death, if treated late or wrongly. The current gold standard in diagnosis is blood culture but may take up to 72 h, which is too long, as sepsis must be handled within the first hour upon start.

Therefore, our overall goals are to:

1. shift from empiric diagnosis/„blind“ prescriptions to evidence-based treatment;
2. personalize the therapy;
3. reduce the time-to-result to 1 h;
4. enable monitoring in real-time of the pathogen presence/biomarker concentration upon treatment;
5. de-centralize diagnosis from lab to the point of care.

Technologically, we aim to achieve these goals by developing and integrating on the same point-of-care platform (Spindiag Rhonda) assays for a broad panel of:

(i) sepsis-associated bacteria;
(ii) relevant antibiotic resistance genes;
and (iii) three inflammation biomarkers for the rapid diagnosis of sepsis in the “golden 1 hour”.

Photo Credit/Source: Benita Johannsen, Hahn-Schickard

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