Validation of protein biomarkers to diagnose the early onset of sepsis

Severe infections cause widespread inflammation carried in the bloodstream (also known as sepsis) which is associated with the development of organ failure and death, and remains a significant healthcare problem. Early and accurate diagnosis of sepsis, with timely therapeutic interventions, is crucial to improved patient survival and reduced healthcare costs, but remains challenging and usually relies on intelligent clincial guesswork. The proposed project will employ a high performance protein screening platform to validate a panel of candidate protein biomarkers (with published links to sepsis) for the rapid diagnosis of patients with systemic inflammation and differentiation of sepsis cases from SIRS. If successful, the validated markers will be advanced onto an automated version of the platform to facilitate clinical use at the point-of-care, allowing clinicians to adopt innovative approaches to sepsis management to improve survival, safety, patient experience and cost efficiency.