Austrian startup develops life-saving rapid blood sepsis diagnostics

Love a company doing high impact, life saving tech:

One in five deaths worldwide is caused by sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to a bloodstream infection.  The infection-fighting processes turn on the body, overshoot and result in the need for amputation or multi-organ failure.

Fast diagnosis is critical to avoid the infection escalating.. For over 50 years, blood culture has remained the diagnostic gold standard for bloodstream infections like sepsis. However, it is slow, lacks sensitivity, and relies heavily on the volume and timing of the sample. While molecular technologies have transformed many aspects of clinical microbiology, they have yet to offer a viable alternative to blood cultures.

The Austrian startup [Cellectric Biosciences](https://www.cellectric.com/) is working to accelerate the speed of diagnosis by isolating pathogens from human samples such as blood, to allow for detection in less than four hours.