Paediatric Fever LFD

We are currently developing a point of care diagnostic that simplifies fever management in children by identifying those that require antibiotic treatment, and are suitable for community management.

Fever in Children

Fever is the most common reason children visit the primary care, as well as emergency care. A child has about 3-6 febrile illnesses a year, and there are about 680 million children in the world. About 25 million episodes of febrile illness in young children are managed by clinicians yearly in the US alone. Although most of these illnesses are self limiting viral illnesses, 5%-10% are serious bacterial infections, and 3%-4% may progress to sepsis. Although many clinical scoring systems have been developed for predicting bacterial infection, they are not widely used in practice. the gold standard diagnostic for bacteria takes 24-48 hours and cannot be used in acute settings.

Hutano Fever LFD

Hutano is developing a LFD that differentiates bacterial from viral illness, identifies bacteria of interest, and provides a prognosis of sepsis from a pinger prick sample, within 20 minutes. (insert picture in slides of child with sepsis).

How Sepsis affects lives

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host immune response to infection that is difficult to diagnose and treat. Sepsis is a global crisis, with 49 million cases reported globally and about 245,000 cases in the UK annually. It is associated with an alarmingly high mortality rate of circa 20%. In the UK, the number of deaths caused by sepsis is more than deaths due to breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined. Even among survivors, many patients go on to experience major life-altering or life-limiting effects.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated host immune response to infection that is difficult to diagnose and treat. Sepsis is a global crisis, with 49 million cases reported globally and about 245,000 cases in the UK annually. It is associated with an alarmingly high mortality rate of circa 20%. In the UK, the number of deaths caused by sepsis is more than deaths due to breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined. Even among survivors, many patients go on to experience major life-altering or life-limiting effects.

49 MILLION
cases globally

49 MILLION
cases globally

245 000
uk cases annualLy

245 000
uk cases annualLy

+/-20%
mortality rate

+/-20%
mortality rate

Early Diagnosis

7.6%
risk of mortality

Early diagnosis and quick patient stratification is critical in sepsis cases. The risk of mortality increases by 7.6% for every hour where antibiotics are not administered.

However, the time, cost and technical limitations of the current methods of detecting sepsis delay clinical decision making and application of targeted antibiotic treatment.

7.6%
risk of mortality

Early diagnosis and quick patient stratification is critical in sepsis cases. The risk of mortality increases by 7.6% for every hour where antibiotics are not administered.

However, the time, cost and technical limitations of the current methods of detecting sepsis delay clinical decision making and application of targeted antibiotic treatment.

85%
low to middle-income countries

The problem of increasing mortality, co-morbidity rate, costs for healthcare providers and antibiotic resistance highlights a critical need for an accessible and rapid diagnosis of sepsis. 

85% of incidents are in low to middle income countries. This highlights a critical need for an accessible and rapid diagnosis of sepsis in these regions.

85%
low to middle-income countries

The problem of increasing mortality, co-morbidity rate, costs for healthcare providers and antibiotic resistance highlights a critical need for an accessible and rapid diagnosis of sepsis. 

85% of incidents are in low to middle income countries. This highlights a critical need for an accessible and rapid diagnosis of sepsis in these regions.

Hutano, MORU, and the UK
Sepsis Trust

Hutano is currently working with the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), and the UK Sepsis Trust to develop a multiplex POC sepsis diagnostic.

  • MORU in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders are currently running the SPOT-SEPSIS observational study which aims at predicting disease severity in young children who present with acute febrile illness in resource limited settings using host biomarkers and clinical features at the point of triage. Their aim is to identify 4-5 optimal prognostic markers for sepsis.
  • The broader partnership including with the UK Sepsis Trust will enable dissemination of findings and facilitate preliminary work on steps to market and systems integration of the proposed device
  • Once the study is concluded, our partnership enables us to be the first to translate the identified biomarkers into a multiplex POC sepsis diagnostic tool.

We’re working to exploit the easy-to-use, rapid and multiplex nature of our aptamer LFD platform to meet the medical need of an accessible, sensitive and accurate sepsis POC diagnostic test.

  • Our innovative LFD would serve as an early warning system enabling time sensitive treatment, improving patient outcomes, reducing the need for hospital admission and saving lives.

Future Applications

Excitingly, the resulting diagnostic from this project will be only be one amongst many from a future pipeline of products in our platform technology. Given the modular nature of our platform and access to a library of over 7000 aptamers, we’re able to develop LFDs for a wide-range of applications.

 

If you’re interested in collaborating with us on a platform application, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch!