NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – PathoQuest, announced today that it has partnered with Mayo Clinic to study the company's iDtect Blood test in order to improve the diagnosis of neutropenic fever in patients.
As part of the collaboration, the Mayo Clinic will apply the next-generation sequencing-based metagenomic test in a prospective study designed to validate its utility.
Febrile neutropenia is the development of fever in patients with neutropenia, an exceptionally low number of white blood cells in the bloodstream.
PathoQuest's test allows clinicians and researchers to advance bacterial and viral detection in blood samples from immunocompromised patients with suspected samples.
"Standard approaches like blood cultures often fail to identify a causative organism in patients with febrile neutropenia," PathoQuest CMO Helene Peyro-Saint Paul said in a statement. "[The] ability of iDtect Blood to improve the identification of bacteria and RNA and DNA viruses should lead to a more precise and rapid determination of the clinically relevant microorganisms."
Last month, PathoQuest partnered with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) to develop the company's iDtect blood test at MSK's microbiology lab.