Real-time Assessment of Antimicrobial Concentrations for Personalized Treatment of Infectious Diseases

In this SBIR proposal, ProbiusDx aims to develop a non-invasive point of care diagnostic technology for detecting and monitoring blood concentrations of antimicrobial drugs. The ability to measure drug concentrations in a patients blood provides valuable information for individualized optimal dosing, maximal efficacy and reduced potential for undesirable side effects. Our ground-breaking work at Stanford led to the demonstration of a probe-free, broad-spectrum molecular analyzer capable of assessing very low concentrations of multiple types of molecular analytes in human serum. Designed to mimic the olfactory system, it relies on a nanoscale electrochemical solid-liquid interface to detect the vibronic signatures of the biomolecular matrix, and uses the analytical capability of machine learning to identify the biomarker signatures within the complex matrix. In synergy with our transition from academic research into commercial applications, the objective of this phase I proposal is to leverage our technology platform and demonstrate a panel of clinically relevant biomarkers to characterize blood concentration of antimicrobial drugs (e.g. Amphotericin B) in near real time by measuring drug concentration in plasma as bound to human serum proteins or unbound (free fraction) therefore providing effective blood concentrations independently of the individual patients actual antimicrobial-protein binding, and enabling individualized therapy.