Point of Care Device for Reducing Overuse of Antibiotics in Potentially Septic Hospital Populations

Principal Investigator Program Director Last first middle Reddy Jr Bobby Project Summary At least percent of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unnecessary This has obviously catastrophic implications for the future of humanity Sepsis is the third leading cause of death in the United States with an annual toll of over people Survival rates have been reported to drop by per hour appropriate treatment is delayed This drastic drop in survival rate leads to vast over prescription of antibiotics in hospital settings A dominant factor underlying this behavior is the lack of rapid methods to determine whether or not an individualized patient would actually benefit from the intended course of antibiotics Furthermore if a course of antibiotics are chosen to be administered it is not clear how to optimize the de escalation of the antibiotics This results in a blanket antibiotics approach where nearly every patient with even a possibility of sepsis is dosed with broad spectrum antibiotics and stays on these antibiotics for far longer than is necessary Procalcitonin PCT has shown much promise in recent years as a potential discriminator between bacterial and viral infections Various assays for PCT from company such as bioMerieux and Roche have received k clearance from the FDA for use by physicians in optimizing the administration of antibiotics In addition Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome SIRS criteria are often used as rough indications of a global inflammatory problem in patients Of these four criteria WBC count respiratory rate heart rate and temperature only the WBC count is not currently possible to measure outside of clinical labs A handheld device that could combine both a WBC count and a plasma PCT measurement from a drop of blood in minutes could revolutionize the administration of antibiotics in acute care settings In particular obtaining the first measurement of both PCT and WBC as early as possible before arrival to Emergency Departments is critical Ideally this would be obtained in the most common funnels into the acute care EDs including outpatient ambulatory and nursing home settings Several studies have shown that the temporal trends of these two parameters can be very powerful for further adjustments to the administered antibiotics For example Roche s Elecsys BRAHMS PCT system recommends that a PCT measurement is performed at both day and day and that the difference should be used to inform optimization of the antibiotics ElectroCyt Inc is an early stage company that has raised $ M in investment and has licensed its core technology from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The company aims to develop a hand held electronic reader with an accompanying pipeline of cartridge designs to measure a variety of cell counts cell surface receptor expression levels and plasma protein expression levels Our first cartridge will measure a total WBC count and PCT from a drop of blood The company has signed an exciting joint development agreement JDA with Foxconn Interconnect Technologies FIT to co develop the low cost prototype cartridge and hand held readers letter attached In addition ElectroCyt has also established two clinical partnerships with hospitals to perform clinical studies letters attached to build a unique combined biomarker EMR dataset This dataset when combined with machine learning for predictive analytics and the patient s latest biomarker readings will provide real time feedback to physicians as to a patient s overall immune state score This score could be used as individualized evaluation of how well a patient is recovering or not recovering from a septic event which can help physicians adjust course of antibiotics with real time feedback In this project we will adapt our core technology which has focused on cell measurements to enable plasma protein measurements as well In addition we will continue to perform clinical studies to build the unique combined biomarker EMR dataset at three clinical sites University of Chicago Main Hospital Carle Foundation Hospital and Order of Saint Francis OSF hospital Principal Investigator Program Director Last first middle Reddy Jr Bobby Project Narrative At least percent of antibiotics prescribed in the United States are unnecessary This has obviously catastrophic implications for the future of humanity Sepsis is the third leading cause of death in the United States with an annual toll of over people Survival rates have been reported to drop by per hour appropriate treatment is delayed This drastic drop in survival rate leads to vast over prescription of antibiotics in hospital settings ElectroCyt Inc is an early stage company that has raised angel investment and licensed its core technology from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign The company aims to develop a system to more intelligently optimize the use of and potential de escalation of antibiotics in acute care settings The system consists of a hand held electronic reader and accompanying pipeline of disposable cartridges to measure cell counts cell surface protein expression and plasma protein expression from a drop of blood Measurement of the blood biomarkers combined with a predictive analytics machine learning approach will accurately capture the patient s immune state as a progression of recovery from an adverse event This system consisting of a device to measure biomarkers rapidly from blood and a machine learning algorithm could provide real time feedback to physicians describing an individual patient s specific response to the administered antibiotics This could help to eliminate unnecessary antibiotics while the pathogen is being identified and to de escalate the antibiotics at higher susceptibility to resistance much faster