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Rapid endotoxin Detection INNOVATION PROJECTS
IIT DELHI

Shalini Gupta, Prasanta Kalita - IIT Delhi

A flow-through bioassay for rapid endotoxin detection in critically ill/septicemia patients - Sepsis is the single largest
cause of neonatal fatalities, especially in resource-poor healthcare settings. These fatalities occur due to the delay in
initiation and/or ineffectiveness of appropriate antibiotic therapies. Commonly applied sepsis diagnostic methods
based on microbiological analysis are hampered by the uncertainties associated with the growth of bacterial
pathogens in culture media due to prior antibiotic exposure, while newer methods based on detection of procalcitonin
(PCT) levels, a surrogate sepsis biomarker, in serum are unable to offer definitive results due to the higher degrees of
variations among neonates. The diagnosis of systemic infection/sepsis at the presymptomatic stage of infection could
allow early administration of effective therapeutics and dramatically reduce mortality and morbidity. Recent studies
indicate that endotoxins, which are a highly conserved component of the Gram-negative bacterial cell wall causing the
sepsis, can serve as an early and pathogen-specific biomarker for sepsis diagnosis. In fact, while PCT levels take 2‒6
h to significantly rise within serum, endotoxin levels in serum rise well within 2 h, thereby uniquely positioning it as an
early biomarker for diagnosis of sepsis in neonates, where early therapies are most necessary. Since the significant
causative agents of sepsis in India are Gram-negative bacteria (~30-60%) due to their predominance in the normal
intestinal flora and the hosptial environment, they form the basis of our project study.