NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BioMérieux is collaborating with Bioaster, a French accelerator of microbiology technology innovation; ESPCI, the College of Physics and Industrial Chemistry of the city of Paris; GSK; HCL, the Hospices Civils de Lyon; and Sanofi to identify and validate new biomarkers aimed at diagnosing patients that present with high risk of sepsis.
The partners expect to validate new predictive tests that enable diagnosis and monitoring of a patient's inflammatory and immunosuppression status and let clinicians implement a personalized diagnostic and treatment strategy that prevents patients from developing sepsis.
The partners are combining multiple areas of expertise — medical, academic research, diagnostic, and pharmaceutical — within a more than €8.0 million ($8.96 million) research program called Reanimation Low Immune Status Markers (REALISM).
The new public and private partnership has an objective of developing diagnostic and therapeutic solutions that fight sepsis based on the results of a completed project in 2018.
Bioaster, BioMérieux, ESPCI, HCL, and Sanofi launched the project in 2014, based on research conducted by BioMérieux and HCL. In September, GSK and the vaccine division of Sanofi joined the collaboration.
"ESPCI Paris, with its expertise in droplet-based microfluidic systems, will make the bridge between technological development and clinical research," Andrew Griffiths, director of the biochemistry laboratory, ESPCI Paris, said in a statement. "The integration of microfluidic technology with immunological assays through the REALISM project will result in an innovative system capable of single-cell analysis of clinical samples in a relevant time frame compatible with daily clinical practice.
Personalizing patient management will reduce the risks of infectious complications and increase the patients' chances of survival, and it will also contribute to the fight against antimicrobial resistance with fewer infections leading to fewer antibiotic prescriptions, according to BioMérieux.
BioMérieux, which already provides multiple solutions for sepsis diagnosis including biomarkers and molecular assays, has multiple competitors in the market for sepsis testing.
A number of companies including Roche, T2 Biosystems, OpGen, DNAe, Sepset, and Accelerate Diagnostics are either developing or marketing advanced sepsis detection systems.