Pathogen Identification of Wounds Via Bead-Based Multiplexing

Arete Associates and Luminex Corporation propose a Phase II SBIR effort to develop a portable, Point-of-Care system that enables rapid identification of known and de novo pathogens in wounds. The proposed system, which leverages Luminex"s award-winning bead-based multiplexing technology and Arete"s advanced bioinformatics algorithms, provides pathogen identification and antibiotic resistance information for targeted treatment. The proposed work builds on key results from Phase I, including: (a) proof-of-concept demonstration of an algorithmic technique to detect antibiotic resistance signatures that can be exploited for assay design, (b) feasibility demonstration of streamlined multiplex assays for wound pathogen identification with the ability to optionally add protein assays, and (c) establishment of a strong foundation for rapid multiplex cytokine and pathogen detection through an efficient, simple workflow with low levels of detection for both purified and complex (in-context) sample matrixes.