NEW YORK — New England Hemolytics said last week that it has received a $274,858 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a pathogen DNA extraction system that can be used in the diagnosis of sepsis.
According to the grant's abstract, the system comprises a whole-blood liquefaction system, a filtration-based pathogen capture system, and a high-efficiency pathogen lysing and DNA elution system. DNA extraction can be performed in around 20 minutes.
With the Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant, the Guilford, Connecticut-based company aims to evaluate the system's ability to extract DNA from nine species of sepsis-causing pathogens, including bacteria and fungi, in venous whole-blood samples.
Open-platform DNA-based diagnostic instruments and commercially available DNA detection kits will then be used to identify and quantify the captured pathogens, as well as to assess the efficiency and overall detection accuracy of the diagnostic system, according to the grant's abstract.