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Project

Development of rapid diagnostics for drug-resistant bloodstream infections
 

Thailand
Project ID
109302
Total Funding
CAD 254,200.00
IDRC Officer
Samuel Oji Oti
Project Status
Active
Duration
36 months

Programs and partnerships

Lead institution(s)

Summary

Globally, bloodstream infections are a significant cause of clinical morbidity and mortality estimated to cause several hundred thousand deaths annually worldwide.Read more

Globally, bloodstream infections are a significant cause of clinical morbidity and mortality estimated to cause several hundred thousand deaths annually worldwide. The considerable time it takes to identify and test for antibiotic-resistant infections results in critical delays to administer appropriate antimicrobial therapy and it has a detrimental effect on the clinical outcome of patients.

With advances to cutting-edge molecular diagnostic technologies like mass spectrometry, the time required to identify an infectious agent has been drastically reduced. However, cost and availability issues have prevented clinicians from applying these technologies towards improving the clinical management of blood infections.

This project aims to develop and evaluate new diagnostics technology that will allow clinicians to identify a pathogen and produce a clinical profile of its susceptibility to clinical therapies in less than one hour. Once developed and validated, the project will undertake real-world testing in clinical laboratories.

The project will involve an international and multidisciplinary team of collaborators from Thailand, France, Poland, and Canada, with expertise in proteogenomics, bacteriology, molecular epidemiology, and clinical microbiology. The project is establishing a partnership with a Canadian private sector company that will provide technical, commercial, and legal expertise to support the downstream licensing and commercialization of the technology.

This is one of five IDRC-funded projects developed through the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR), an international platform that coordinates global funding to support collaborative research and action on antimicrobial resistance. Through the JPIAMR, IDRC has partnered with 18 other donor agencies to fund innovative research projects on diagnostics and surveillance strategies, tools, and technologies that can be used to detect and monitor antimicrobial resistance in human, animal, and environmental settings, particularly in low and middle-income countries.