Rapid Electrodynamic Sepsis diagnostics

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that causes 11 million deaths worldwide annually. In sepsis, an infectious pathogen most commonly bacteria - triggers the immune system to react inappropriately. A rapid diagnosis of the presence of a pathogen(s) and identification of its specific type(s) facilitates an early initiation of antibiotic treatment and allows an administration of the most appropriate ones. The current diagnostic standard is a low-efficacy and slow bacteriological culture, which typically requires a 24-72h to receive results, of which approximately 80% are negative. In this cooperative project, the research team of Marcin Osuchowski, from the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Traumatology together with Klemens Wassermann and Terje Wimberger from the CellEctric Company, Vienna, investigate a faster and more efficient method for bacteria detection in the whole blood of septic patients using novel bio- electrodynamic filters. Lysis of the full blood samples will be performed via an exposure to electric fields, producing a mixture of destroyed non-bacterial cells and non-damaged and viable bacteria. Through a special filtration, a purified sample containing concentrated pathogenic bacteria will be further used for their more specific identification and characterization. This will be performed via the so-called on-filter cultivation and exposing the bacteria to different kinds of enzymes, with which the pathogens will react in very characteristic ways depending on their type. If successful, this approach will minimize the pathogen detection time to approximately 6 hours. At the end of this project, there will be a ready-to-use and simple diagnostic workflow waiting to be verified in a prospective clinical study.