TheraEDGE
- TheraEDGE's three platform components
Early diagnosis and treatment of lower respiratory tract infections by pathogen screening and analysis of antibiotic resistance
Community-acquired Lower Respiratory Tract Infections (CA-LRTI) are the leading reason for seeking medical care. Relying primary on medical history and physical examinations, diagnosis of CA-LRTI is still very challenging. Only few patients are subjected to laboratory investigations and the differentiation of viral or bacterial infections on the basis of clinical symptoms is almost impossible. This considerable diagnostic uncertainty for clinicians paired with a substantial over-prescription of antibiotics makes CA-LRTI the leading cause of antibiotics use in Europe.
Built around a shared network of European partners from industry and academic institutions the TheraEDGE project aims at the improvement of patient healthcare in the primary case scenario. By simultaneous testing for different pathogens and their antibiotic resistance the project strives for improved standards of care through more effective and timely diagnosis (30-40 min) of CA-LRTI. Thus, the TheraEDGE platform could provide clinicians with the pivotal information for a targeted antibiotic treatment resulting in a significant reduction of antibiotics misuse.
The core component of the TheraEDGE platform is a chip-based analytical platform (TheraTest) that supports screening for multiple pathogens applying amplification-free detection technologies. Starting from nasopharyngeal swab samples, the system implements a full sample preparation protocol that does not require any manual user operation except from sample insertion and starting the analysis. After fragmentation of the extracted nucleic acids and pathogen-sequence specific fluorescence labelling in a hybridization step, an optical detection step is performed for characterization of the sample material.
Contact: Dr. Ralf Himmelreich, Fluidics and Simulation Department,
Phone: +49 6131/990 492
