Sepsis is a severe and life-threatening condition caused by bacterial infection and is one of the most common causes of death in hospitalized patients.
Nearly 1.7 million adults in the US develop sepsis, and a quarter of that number die from the infection, according to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Some infections cannot be resolved by general antibiotics because of strains of bacteria mutating, making it a challenge to provide adequate treatment.
Juhong Chen, assistant professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Engineering, recently received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to develop novel phage- and CRISPR-based approaches to detect and treat sepsis, including hybrid bio-inorganic nanobots, CRISPR-based devices, and CRISPR-equipped engineered phages. Chen and his research group also aim to address challenges for the detection of sepsis-related pathogens in blood samples. Chen’s research could lead to formulating a revolutionary strategy to diagnose sepsis in blood samples in the future.
Due to the dynamic and acute nature of sepsis, it requires immediate medical treatment. If sepsis is not diagnosed and treated quickly, septic shock will occur, thus resulting in failing blood pressure and loss of sufficient oxygen to organs of the body. Current diagnosing methods either are rapid but fail to offer the necessary sensitivity and accuracy or they rely on culture-based colony counting which does not meet the speed required.
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