An integrated platform enabling Theranostic applications at the Point of Primary Care (TheraEdge). (TheraEdge)

TheraEDGE (An integrated platform enabling Theranostic applications at the Point of Primary Care), is an Integrated Project supported for four years by the European Commission as part of FP7, ICT ¿ Information and Communication Technologies, Objective ICT-2007.5.1 (Personal Health Systems for Monitoring and Point of Care Diagnostics). The main objective of this project is the rapid detection of organisms that cause CA-LRTI (Community acquired lower respiratory tract infections) and the identification of resistance profiles to antibiotics that are commonly used for the treatment of these infections. A viable diagnostic system based on single molecule detection will be developed for the early diagnosis and treatment of LRTI at the point of primary care. The Laboratory of Medical Microbiology (UA) is leading two workpackages in TheraEDGE, Clinical definition/validation and Bioassay development. The Clinical definition/validation platform aims at the validation of the TheraEDGE device by assessing its analytical specificity, sensitivity and reproducibility and by testing its performance on clinical specimens in comparison with the best available conventional methods. A selection of the most relevant etiological agents of CA-LRTI and associated antibiotic resistances will be made during the Bioassay development. Moreover, probes will be developed against multiple targets for highly specific detection of pathogens causing CA-LRTI and finally the probe design will be validated for the lab-on-a-chip format.

Keywords:PRIMARY CARE, MOLECULAR DIAGNOSTICS, ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE

Disciplines:Microbiology, Systems biology, Laboratory medicine

Project type:Collaboration project