One in five deaths worldwide is caused by sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to a bloodstream infection. The process of fighting infection turns on the body, luxuries and results in the need for amputation or multi-organ failure.
Early diagnosis is critical to avoid escalating infection. For more than 50 years, blood culture has remained the diagnostic gold standard for bloodstream infections such as sepsis. But it is slow, lacks sense, and relies on a solid and timed sample. While molecular technologies have changed many aspects of clinical microbiology, they have however, they offer a viable alternative to blood cultures.
Austrian startup Cellelectric Biosciences is working to accelerate the speed of diagnosis, by isolating pathogens from human samples such as blood, to be detected in less than four hours, increasing the speed of diagnosis.
I joined the team in Vienna, where Austria won the local Start World Cup. I spoke to Terje Wimberger PhD, director and co-founder of Curator; as more
The company has developed an electromagnetic sample preparation system to enable complex, automated and selective analytical detection of human samples.
It is’ patent-pending mode couples electric fields into liquids without electrochemical means, instead using state-of-the-art dielectric materials to induce highly targeted electrodynamic effects. This allows the selective isolation of specific target cells in a complex sample.
In simple language, an electric current zaps the blood cells away, leaving sepsis-causing pathogens exposed for rapid testing.
Its technology exposes blood samples to an oscillating electrical current. Through strength and frequency, unwanted “backgrounds” in human samples can be destroyed, meaning to test for pathogens that need to be tested.
How does this work in practice?
The company has developed a Cellelectric base station, which it calls a cellular Wi-Fi router.
It is a hardware cartridge that can be used in machines that have been developed or are available in the future for commercial equipment factories.
The clinician usually draws 10 ml of blood and feeds it into a cartridge loaded into the device.
Wimberger explained that “the machine shelf is mostly off except for a few parts of the property.” Basically on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), the software is magic on cartridges.”
Within 20 minutes, most of the white and red blood cell content will be destroyed; however, the treatment pathogens will be intact and contracted in a smaller volume.
In addition, This fully automated platform is easily integrated into existing workflows, offering a fully automated solution that increases efficiency in clinical settings.
From academia to saving lives
Cellelectrical biosciences originated from the Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria’s largest research institute.
Wimberger explained that over a decade of research that included extensive literature reviews and expert interviews that revealed the need for new diagnostic techniques.
“We looked at the need to make a faster diagnosis and identify the problem of isolating the pathogen in the blood. How to remove the blood?
How do you purify the body for example? After looking at many different technologies and possibilities, we found that electric fields were the answer.”
After a lot of trial and error we found a way to couple the electric fields inside the liquids that specifically target the cells you want. So now we can draw pathogens from the blood quite easily.
Cellectrica Biosciences aims to have data from customer companies by the end of 2025, with co-development or licensing deals the following year, and potentially to start commercializing its technology in 2027.
The company is also working with a Swiss company and clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland regarding antibiotic resistance issues for patients suffering from cystic fibrosis.
Of course, moving from academic research to commercial applications is not an easy task in medtech. Second Wimberger, the difficult part is communication.
“Sometimes when you explain what you’re doing, they think otherwise. The challenge is to explain the science in a soundbite. ”
He also notes;
“As academics, we tend to only make statements when we have a degree of certainty. But an entrepreneur is about guessing and making uncertain statements about the future!
But it was a successful company, and its origins can be traced back to Vienna. note the route where “the first time you are” at universities, you receive communication. Then you have the pre-seed non-dilutive funding e* aws PreSeed program and from then on.
Cellelectric Biosciences current funding is provided by the FFG Basis program and AWS Seed funding, with private equity-led investments Xista Science Ventures.
The company’s next goal is to get seed funding to commercialize its potentially life-saving technology.