This team successfully won a Discovery Award seed-funding grant to help further develop their ideas for their Longitude Prize application and create a diagnostic test  that helps solve the problem of global antibiotic resistance. Below we have asked them to explain their test and motivation for applying.

Please explain your test.

Septiflo is the first and only rapid card test or endotoxin detection at the bedside of patients. It provides results in under 10 minutes. It can stratify patients based on their Gram-status and the severity of their infection. Bacterial infections in blood can become lethal in patients with low immunity. Our device can tell whether the blood has been infected by bacteria or not, and if so, what kind. All it requires is a drop of blood and a few liquid dropper bottles.

Please share a more detailed description of this work from a medical professional’s perspective.

This is the first low-cost, disposable kit that uses a drop of patient’s blood to detect endotoxemia under 10 minutes. The detection is based on a colorimetric response that changes with the extent of infection in blood. Performing the same test with two different reagents can also identify whether the infection is Gram-positive or Gram-negative bacteria. No peripheral equipment is required at any stage including sample preparation or signal readout, eliminating the need for trained physicians or a sophisticated microbiology laboratory. The kit is intended for use in urban and rural settings alike. Its highest impact is anticipated if multiple tests a day are performed on patients for pre-clinical screening, early diagnosis and management of sepsis, and for monitoring the progress of an infection so that the outcomes may be predicted. Eventually we hope these device would help to reduce the mortality and morbidity due to sepsis.

Why did you apply and what will the Discovery Award funding be used for in your work?

We needed funding support and expert mentorship to steer our work forward from the prototype to pre-commercial product development stage. We would like to use this Discovery Award for applying for foreign patents and small scale clinical trials.

What difference will your work make in the long term with regards to antimicrobial diagnostics? 

Early diagnosis of infectious diseases is key to curbing antimicrobial resistance. Our device gives information about the gram-status of infection within a couple of hours of its onset. In other words, it enables a clinician to prescribe a narrow spectrum antibiotic instead of a broad spectrum one.

If there is a design for a prototype, please describe it and how it will work.

The test is a standard flow through point-of-care test that is available for various diagnostics, like HIV. The key differentiator is that there is no receptor/affinity binding reagent or secondary colour reagent on the test capture membrane. This reduces not only the cost but also makes the process highly simple, scalable and robust.

Who is on your team?
Dr. Shalini Gupta and Dr. Venkataraman Sritharan

If you are interested in collaborating with this team, please email us.