Abstract

Accurate Sepsis Diagnostic in a Microfluidic Assay

Daniel Irimia, Associate Professor/Associate Director, Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School

We identify sepsis in patients with higher precision than ever before, by measuring the motility phenotype of neutrophils, directly in a droplet of blood, using a novel microfluidic device.
 
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition when an abnormal response of the immune system injures one’s own body.  Early sepsis diagnostic could save lives; however, our current abilities for early diagnostic of sepsis early are limited.  In this presentation, we will discuss the design and validation of a novel microfluidic assay that significantly improves our abilities to diagnose and monitor sepsis in patients.  We focused on neutrophils, the white blood cells that are the earliest responders to tissue injury and microbial invasion.  We designed microfluidic devices that helped measure the motility phenotype of neutrophils with higher precision than ever before.  We simplified the logistics of neutrophil measurements by performing these measurements directly in one droplet of blood.  We optimized the assay on one cohort of 20 patients in the intensive care unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and then validated the assay in a separate cohort of 20 patients.  Our results show that the new assay can help identify patients with sepsis and monitor the changes of their condition over time with significantly higher accuracy than current standards.