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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.