Development of the fast, cost-effective and robust point-of-care diagnostics platform MAZER for clinical applications in infectious disease testing. Technology Background
Fast, simple and low-cost infection diagnostics directly at the patient bedside remains an unmet need in the health-care diagnostics market. For complex and life-threatening infectious illnesses however, reliable diagnostics can
take place only through laborious and time-consuming procedures with the participation of a central laboratory employing qualified specialists. An example of such an illness is sepsis (“blood poisoning“). Of the approx. 240,000 Sepsis cases per year in Germany half must be treated in the intensive-care unit. Treatment is complex, because most sepsis-cases are caused by more than 30 different pathogens that make up more than 90% of cases. Additionally some of these pathogens are already resistant against specific anti-fungals and antibiotics. To administer an effective a life-saving therapy, the physician must know which pathogen is present and which pharmaceutical is applicable for the treatment. With a mortality rate of 7% per hour following ICU admission it is critical that this information is conveyed to the physician as rapidly as possible. Magna Diagnostics GmbH has recognized this need and is developing the MAZER - an innovative fully integrated diagnostics platform, which consists of robust plastic cards the size of a credit card and an analyzer, which is smaller and not more expensive than a notebook. MAZER is specifically conceived for the rapid diagnosis of life-threatening infections such as the sepsis case described above. All reagents necessary for the specific test are present on the plastic cards including the detection modules. The sample (usually patient blood) is taken from the patient with a commercial syringe. The content of the syringe is injected into the plastic card, which is inserted in turn into the analyzer device. The test will ultimately run fully automatically and the final result is indicated on an integrated screen, and can be printed by an attached printer through the integrated USB interface and then be down loaded onto a computer or alternatively sent through a wireless protocol. The system can be easily utilized in the hospital or by office-based physicians or other health care personnel and the device gives a precise diagnostic result in about one hour after blood withdrawal.
