Traditional microbiology proceeds on some simple steps that are time consuming

• Culture: The presence of bacteria in blood is characterized by “blood culture”, which can take 6-48 hours.  This is too slow to influence initial therapy.  Why not develop a faster test ? Other attempts at this include rapid PCR, and immune markers; but those have inherent limitations.  Rapid PCR does not distinguish between viable and non-viable bacteria, and markers of immune response are generally delayed from the onset of infection by about 24 hours.  Our technology is different in that we characterize the presence of certain markers associated with bacteria presence.

• Standard sample for AST: Antimicrobial susceptibility AST is characterized on “standard” samples, which are mono-microbial suspensions (suspensions of a single bacteria) at a standard concentration. It takes roughly 24 hours (for urine samples) or 48 hours (for blood samples) to prepare these standard samples from the clinical test sample. Why not test the clinical sample directly ? Several attempts have been made previously; but those have failed.  Our attempt is successful because we understand certain scaling relationships that govern these tests.  And because we have the enabling technology described above.