VIDEO: Quick, cheap assay for bacterial infections wins incubator award at IDWeek
LOS ANGELES — A panel of experts awarded David Roach, MD, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and his team a $5,000 grant to aid in the development of a low-cost, easy-to-use assay for bacterial bloodstream infections.
The assay Roach and his team developed won the IDea Incubator’s innovator of the year and people’s choice awards at IDWeek.
Called BADLOCK, the assay was designed to be used in low-resource settings. It has demonstrated up to 90% sensitivity and specificity in identifying bacterial pathogens, which it can do in 1 1/2 hours using minimal infrastructure, according to Roach.
In the above video, Roach explains the assay’s development and his team’s plan to test it in the field with collaborators in Peru.
Low- and middle-income countries are the most affected by bacterial infections but often the least able to detect them, Roach noted.
“If we’re able to detect these bacterial infections, we can treat them appropriately,” he said. “It’s a real challenge to get the proper treatment when you don’t know what the patient has. The goal of this is to really empower clinicians to make the right choices in areas where they weren’t able to do that before.”
To read more about the assay, click here.
Collapse
Healio Coverage