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Partnership with Danaher paves way for precision medicine test for sepsis

The University of Oxford today announced a partnership with Danaher Corporation to develop a new test to enable precision medicine care for sepsis, a pathological immune response to infection that accounts for one in five deaths globally each year.

Floor and beds in a stretcher in a hospital environment © Shutterstock.com

The test will build on research from the laboratory of Julian Knight a Professor of genomic medicine at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and leading expert in sepsis biology. The novel test will leverage rapid molecular diagnostic technologies provided by Cepheid, a Danaher subsidiary, to pinpoint different subtypes of sepsis and allow the development of novel personalised care paths including which targeted therapies are most likely to help. 

Sepsis is a serious condition that occurs when the immune system fails to react normally to an infection and damages tissues throughout the body. If left unchecked, it can lead to complete organ failure.

Currently, doctors cannot accurately predict which patients are most likely to develop sepsis after an infection, nor can they determine which early-stage cases of sepsis are most likely to become severe or life-threatening, and by what mechanisms of immune dysfunction.

 

Read the full story on the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre website.

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