NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – PathoQuest announced today it has entered a collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) to establish the company's iDtect blood test within MSK's microbiology lab.
In addition, PathoQuest will compare the iDtect blood test with standard testing methods used to identify microbes responsible for infections in patients with febrile neutropenia.
Febrile neutropenia is the development of fever in a patient with neutropenia, an abnormally low number of white blood cells in the bloodstream.
PathoQuest's next-generation sequencing-based metagenomic test allows microbiologists and physicians to improve detection of bacteria and viruses in blood samples from immunocompromised patients with suspected samples.
"The identification of microorganism in immunocompromised patients who present with a suspicion of infection represents a diagnostic challenge since standard microbiological testing methodologies are often not timely or effective," Chief of the Clinical Microbiology Service at MSK Yi-Wei Tang said in a statement. "This collaboration [with PathoQuest] will enable the identification of bacteria and viruses responsible for infections."