AUTOMATED CLINICAL PLATFORM FOR PERSONALIZED ANTIBIOTHERAPY IN CRITICAL UNITS BASED ON SURFACE ENHANCEMENT RAMAN SPECTROSCOPY

Introduction

Sepsis is a leading cause of death in hospitals, resulting in approximately 700,000 deaths in Europe each year. Patients urgently require critical care and are admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), where they are treated with antibiotics.

Problem Statement

However, antibiotic dosing is inappropriate in about 50% of sepsis patients, causing poor clinical outcomes due to:

• Increased adverse events
• (Neuro)toxicity
• Contributing to antibiotic resistance

Current Challenges

Antibiotic dosing can be significantly improved through therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Unfortunately, current workflows for drug quantification in clinics and ICUs are:

• Slow
• Expensive
• Inflexible

These limitations have greatly restricted TDM implementation.

Project Overview

We develop ACU-SERS: a first-in-class, highly flexible, fast, and cost-effective system that fully automates the biological sample pre-treatment, analyte separation, and analysis. It provides a quantitative antibiotic drug level concentration in approximately 15 minutes.

Technology Description

ACU-SERS' breakthrough technology combines:

• Centrifugal microfluidics
• An integrated surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) chip

This combination allows for label-free, rapid detection and quantification in an easy-to-use benchtop device.

Development Plan

Based on the H2020 SERSing project, this project focuses on:

1. Developing the Raman-based analyser device
2. Creating the optimal cartridge
3. Validating the scalability of the product and the system with clinical samples

Commercial Strategy

From the commercial side, we will:

• Validate the commercial potential of our solution
• Found a spin-off company to commercialize the technology
• Make the technology investment-ready

We envision that the spin-off will generate early revenues from direct sales in our initial target markets within the EU.

Future Plans

After demonstrating market traction, we will seek to close a global distribution deal with a large diagnostics company for the TDM antibiotic market.

Reinvestment Strategy

Revenues will be reinvested to adapt ACU-SERS for TDM applications in other potential markets, such as:

• Antiepileptics
• Immunosuppressants
• Applications in pharmaceutical research