Developing Personalised Medicine in Sepsis

Professor Gordon to lead on developing diagnostics in Trauma and Critical Care, following funding from the National Institite for Health Research.

The National Institute for Health Research has awarded over £1.3 million to host the NIHR London In Vitro Diagnostics Co-operative, lead by Professor George Hanna, to develop new devices and tests that can be used to treat NHS patients and beyond.

Research at the NIHR London IVD Co-operative will focus on nine clinical areas where there is a need for rapid and accurate diagnostics, one of which is Trauma and Critical Care. This theme is led by Professor Anthony Gordon, who speaks on the strengths of the centre and how the development of diagnostics can help improve patient care.

Professor Anthony Gordon

"Critical Care is looking to develop novel diagnostic tests to aid the management of sepsis. Our programme of work stems from my NIHR Research Professorship to develop “Personalised Medicine in Sepsis”. Our first project will be to test a rapid point-of-care diagnostic device that can sequence bacterial DNA within a few hours from blood samples. This technology was first developed at Imperial College by Professor Chris Toumazou, Regius Professor of Engineering. We will work with the company behind the device, DNA Electronics, and the NIHR London IVD Co-operative to test the device in critical care at Imperial, testing its accuracy, but also assessing how these new devices can be most effectively incorporated into clinical pathways to improve patient management."

"We are also working with other diagnostic companies and the Co-operative to progress our discoveries of sub-phenotypes of patients based on biomarker signatures in the blood into novel diagnostic platforms. These new clinical tests will then identify subgroups of patients most likely to benefit from specific treatments in sepsis."

"Finally, as new technologies provide more rapid tests that can be carried out closer to patients, the critical care environment provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the real benefit these diagnostics can bring to patient management. The multiple intensive care units at Imperial provide an excellent resource for clinical trials of new diagnostic tests."