Abionic Early Sepsis Detection with Pancreatic Stone Protein (PSP)

Early Sepsis Detection with Pancreatic Stone Protein (PSP)

Sepsis

Sepsis is defined as life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated host response to infection.

Early recognition of sepsis is essential and is a major determinant of the disease’s outcome, according to The WHO and the Surviving Sepsis Campaign.

However this has proven to be challenging as the confirmation of sepsis diagnosis is based largely on nonspecific clinical signs, laboratory findings and medical scores which are usually obtained after sepsis onset.

Currently, C-reactive protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) are biomarkers routinely used for patients suspected of sepsis. Pancreatic stone protein or PSP is an emerging biomarker showing promise as it is characterized by higher accuracy in the diagnosis and prognosis of sepsis compared to CRP and PCT.

The Pancreatic Stone Protein (PSP)

• A 16 kDa polypeptide of the C-type lectin family of protein.
• Mostly secreted by the acinar cells of the pancreas but also by the intestine and stomach.
• An early sensor of sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction acting as an “alert signal” to help clinicians provide adequate infection control strategies and organ support to restore homeostasis.

Performance

PSP was proven to be more accurate, with a higher sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values than CRP, PCT, IL-6 and other cytokines for the diagnosis of sepsis and prognosis of unfavourable outcomes in multiple studies and clinical settings (ED, ICU, surgical, nonsurgical adult and children).

It also performed well in studies involving a variety of critically ill patients including severe burns, polytrauma, post-cardiac surgery and on admission to the ICU.

Unique Characteristic

PSP may start to increase above the normal level before the development of clinical signs and symptoms of sepsis.

It was found to be the only biomarker able to identify sepsis 72 hours before clinical diagnosis, thereby providing a large window of opportunity for timely initiation of accurate clinical management.

PSP Measurement

Can now be done via a Point-of-Care(POC) device, which is uncommon for CRP and PCT in ICU, leading the way for simple, on-demand, around-the-clock, serial biomarker assessments instead of one-off testing upon clinical suspicion of sepsis.

This is key to faster treatment decisions, reducing mortality and lowering sepsis-related healthcare costs.

The IVD CAPSULE PSP on the abioSCOPE® is the first CE-marked in vitro diagnostic test to enable fast, reliable and early sepsis detection at the pointof-care from a single drop of blood in only 5 minutes.

Click the link below for more information:

Products | Abionic

 

References:

Eggimann, Philippe & Que, Yok-Ai & Rebeaud, Fabien. (2019). Measurement of pancreatic stone protein in the identification and management of sepsis. Biomarkers in Medicine. 13. 10.2217/bmm-2018-0194.

Pugin, J., Daix, T., Pagani, JL. et al. Serial measurement of pancreatic stone protein for the early detection of sepsis in intensive care unit patients: a prospective multicentric study. Crit Care 25, 151 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-021-03576-8

World Health Organization (WHO). Sepsis. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sepsis

Rudd KE, Johnson SC, Agesa KM, Shackelford KA, Tsoi D, Kievlan DR, et al. Global, regional, and national sepsis incidence and mortality, 1990-2017: analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. Lancet (London, England). 2020;395(10219):200-11.

Klein HJ, Niggemann P, Buehler PK, Lehner F, Schweizer R, Rittirsch D, Fuchs N, Waldner M, Steiger P, Giovanoli P, Reding T, Graf R, Plock JA. Pancreatic Stone Protein Predicts Sepsis in Severely Burned Patients Irrespective of Trauma Severity: A Monocentric Observational Study. Ann Surg. 2021 Dec 1;274(6):e1179-e1186. doi: 10.1097/SLA.0000000000003784. PMID: 31972652.

Keel et al., 2009 and Reding et al., 2018 Pathophysiological mechanisms of PSP function in Sepsis- Abionic slides; Abionic brochure

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Unravelling The Complexity Of Tumor Microenvironment With High-Dimensional IHC Analysis Platform

27th August 2021, 4pm – 5pm SGT

A comprehensive understanding of the tumor microenvironment, including stromal composition, cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions, abnormal physiology, as well as cellular characteristics of heterogenous tumors is the key to elucidating cancer complexities. Understanding the cellular, molecular, and biochemical interactions of tumors within their microenvironment is essential to improving cancer diagnosis and treatment.

With multiplexing IHC (mlHC) technologies and high-content pathological analysis platform, scientists can simultaneously detect multiple markers on a single tissue section and the comprehensive study of cell composition, cellular functional and cell-cell interactions. mlHC provides high-throughput multiplex staining and standardized quantitative analysis for highly reproducible, efficient and cost-effective tissue studies. This technique has immediate potential for translational research and clinical practice, particularly in the era of tumor microenvironment study and cancer immunotherapy.

 

Speaker's Biographies

By Dr Edward, Li
International Strategic Marketing Manager

Review employee support systems and work policies to ensure they are forward thinking

Organizations should constantly improve their talent acquisition and retention framework, review workflows to improve processes, build up financial standing with external stakeholders and adopt automation technology to reduce burden where possible, believes Ng Boon Thiam, Group CEO of Biomed Global.

Ng Boon Thiam is the Group CEO of Biomed Global – one of the most respected channels in the biomedical and life sciences industry in Malaysia and Singapore. Recognizing the need to improve the standards of healthcare in Malaysia, he started Biomarketing Services (now known as Biomed Global) in 1994 together with his business partner, Chen Keng Hoong. Over the years, Biomed Global has performed strongly in Malaysia and Singapore and has expanded regionally to a number of ASEAN countries. Now, the company has grown to be a significant total solution provider for Clinical Diagnostics and Life Science.

In an exclusive interaction with us, Ng Boon Thiam shares with us how Biomed Global is navigating the second wave and how it is bolstering employee support systems and work policies to support the workforce.

The toughest time is looming as companies have to ensure business continuity and productive output while supporting their workers amid the resurgence of the virus. How is Biomed Global ensuring that?

Biomed Global is in the Clinical Diagnostics Industry which is a critical piece of the country’s healthcare infrastructure. As such, the whole team has been working extremely hard to ensure continuous supply lines, installations, commissioning, trainings and subsequent support to keep the operation going. This pandemic has further empowered our team members to live to our mission of raising the quality of healthcare standards and live to our tag line of Enriching Partners, Enriching Lives.

Biomed formed a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) committee right before the country implemented (Movement Control Order) MCO 1.0 to ensure compliance to the necessary SOPs and take extra care of our team’s wellbeing. The company has granted MCO meal allowances under special circumstances, maintained annual increments and additional remuneration to recognize the various team members who had to take on risks to carry out their tasks professionally. The various events such as making an extra effort for a shipment, special delivery for installation, and training and repairs were communicated and highlighted to all team members so that the efforts are well recognized. The overall morale during this pandemic remains high.

How should organizations rethink talent management amid all this uncertainty? What is Biomed Global’s focus here?

First and foremost, organizations need to be filled with talent that is in sync with the company’s Mission and Values. Talent that is agile and adaptable in this new norm, with a skill set in digitalization, a strong mindset to face any eventuality is greatly valued now. Biomed operates on a performance-based talent strategy, as such our focus is on retaining our highest performing talents and developing our talents to be high-achievers.

How should organizations level up their employee support systems and work policies? What has Biomed Global done in this regard?

“Organizations should constantly improve their talent acquisition and retention framework, review workflows to improve processes, build up financial standing with external stakeholders and adopt automation technology to reduce burden where possible.”

Biomed has since recruited experienced and strategic team members in Talent Management, Finance, and Supply Chain to support these initiatives. Biomed also constantly reviews our employee support systems and work policies to ensure they are forward-thinking and in line with the best in the industry, if not better.

How are you planning for the future amid predictions of phase three of the virus?

Biomed plans to ensure all team members are protected against COVID-19 by procuring the vaccine for our own workforce if the right vaccine is available commercially. Biomed is also investing to move the remainder of our internal operations onto a cloud-based environment. We have also invested in mobile devices to ensure working from home is possible. As our business is a critical piece of the healthcare infrastructure, we do not expect phase three to have a drastic effect on our business. However, some of our growth plans will be delayed due to uncertainty.

What is the strategy and focus for the leadership to tackle challenges posed by the continuing waves of the virus? Could you shed light on the contingency plan for 2021 and Biomed’s industry outlook for FY 2021-2022?

Biomed is fortunate to be in an essential industry during the COVID-19 pandemic and involved in COVID-19 supplies. Biomed’s leadership will continue to ensure everyone’s safety, to ensure the team can continue to operate without interruption. Biomed will continue to engage with team members regularly via monthly operation meetings, and quarterly town halls.

On the business front, we plan to continue our growth initiatives as well, identify products that will complement our current product portfolio. On COVID-19, Biomed has a total solution platform on COVID-19 diagnosis and will focus on possible automation. Post-vaccination stage, Biomed will very much be focused on immunity monitoring and R&D-related supplies for COVID-19. Biomed is optimistic and the outlook for FY 21-22 will continue to be strong for the group.

Author
Shweta Modgil

Digital Health Emerging in Healthcare

 

Digital health promises to change the face of healthcare. Reflecting this is growing interest in the digital health space, as evidenced by a substantial $4.7 billion being invested in 2017, as outlined in the brand new report from IDTechEx Research, Digital Health 2018: Trends, Opportunities and Outlook. Digital health also took prominence in the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in January 2018, illustrating its growing importance – but it is not limited to strictly the healthcare space. CES 2018 also saw digital health having a substantial presence marking a new age of patient-centric healthcare.

The Rise of Digital Health

Digital health is a convoluted and complex field, much of which is made up of technologies and services that enable healthcare outside of traditional clinical settings. It follows a global trend in the healthcare industry of decentralization to alleviate overburdened hospitals and clinics. Coupled with escalating healthcare costs, shrinking profit margins and ageing populations suffering with chronic conditions, digital health offers a solution to these problems for all players in the space including patients, providers and payers.

In fact, it presents such an alluring and lucrative opportunity that companies not previously in the healthcare space are making significant investments and moves to do so. Big tech companies such as Amazon, Apple and Alphabet also used January 2018 to announce their endeavours into the digital health space, impacting the price of stocks in the healthcare market.

Numerous Factors Encouraging the Rise of Digital Health

The time is ripe for digital health due to the combination of a number of factors. These include changing population demographics, such as ageing populations with increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, as well as current and upcoming changes to regulations and reimbursements which mean that the route to market and take-up of digital health services and technologies is more likely in 2018 and beyond.

The Wide Scope of Digital Health

The IDTechEx Research report Digital Health 2018: Trends, Opportunities and Outlook acts as a primer to the digital health space, providing a detailed overview of the ecosystem and offering insights into the key trends, opportunities and outlooks for all aspects of digital health, including:

> Telehealth and telemedicine: the provision of remote clinical or non-clinical services such as doctors visits through video calls e.g. Remote digital examinations for cardiac conditions through measuring heart rate and blood pressure and having a virtual physician meeting.

> Remote patient monitoring: the remote monitoring of individuals to collect information through wearable sensors outside of a clinical settings e.g. smart watches collecting information on blood pressure.

> Digital therapeutics / digiceuticals / software-as-a-drug: using software such as mobile phone apps to diagnose, treat and monitor patients e.g. a mobile app prescribed to treat PTSD.

> Consumer genetic testing: describes the use of genome sequencing on consumer samples to reveal details about an individuals’ genetic make-up which may impact their health e.g. using a cheek swab to determine whether you are likely to be predisposed to particular vitamin deficiencies or whether you are potentially lactose intolerant.

> Diabetes management: chronic diseases such as diabetes present a substantial market for digital health e.g. continuous or flash glucose monitors which are wearable or non-invasive.

> Smart home as a carer: lower costs and sizes of sensors, and better connectivity and networks along with ageing and diseased populations mean that fitting sensors into the home is becoming a reality allowing decentralized healthcare e.g. sensors which alert carers in case of an emergency.

Read more at: https://www.globalbiotechinsights.com/articles/14038/digital-health-is-becoming-a-disruptive-force-in-healthcare

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8th National Transfusion Medicine Conference