Nanogen Awarded Grant for Sepsis System

A grant of U.S.$2.5 million has been awarded to Nanogen, Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA) for the development of a prototype, fully integrated diagnostic system for clinical labs enabling them to identify agents that cause sepsis and community-acquired pneumonia (CAP).

The grant was awarded by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA). It will allow Nanogen to develop improved molecular biologic methods, miniaturize those methods, and demonstrate the performance of this new molecular diagnostic approach in diagnosing sepsis and CAP in a hospital laboratory setting.

Mortality from sepsis ranges from 28-50%, while pneumonia is still the seventh leading cause of U.S. deaths. Estimates of CAP incidence range from four to five million cases per year. Early identification and treatment of both sepsis and CAP will improve patient outcomes. Currently, a full laboratory work-up to determine the cause of sepsis or pneumonia in a patient is time consuming and expensive. Often, broad spectrum antibiotics that may not offer effective treatment are administered while doctors are awaiting test results.

Nanogen will use its proprietary chemistry and multiplex detection technologies and will also employ technologies and microbiologic expertise developed by the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, USA). This partnership's goal is to develop an automated system that will be able to rapidly detect a number of bacteria and viruses that cause sepsis and pneumonia in patients.

"This NIAID/NIH research program will further the design of a sophisticated prototype assay and instrument system and sepsis and pneumonia detection panels to help physicians expedite test results in the hospital lab and make better treatment decisions,” said Howard C. Birndorf, chairman and CEO of Nanogen.






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