One in five deaths worldwide is due to sepsis, the body’s life-threatening response to a bloodstream infection, in which the body’s infection-fighting processes go into overdrive, necessitating amputation or multiple organ failure.
Rapid diagnosis is essential to prevent the spread of infection. For over 50 years, blood cultures have been the gold standard for diagnosing bloodstream infections such as sepsis. However, they are time-consuming, have low sensitivity, and are highly dependent on sample volume and timing. Molecular techniques have transformed many aspects of clinical microbiology but have not yet provided a practical alternative to blood cultures.
Austrian startup Cellectric Biosciences is working to speed up diagnostics by isolating pathogens from human samples such as blood and making them detectable within four hours.
I met the company in Vienna, where it had just won the local Startup World Cup Austria, and I spoke to Managing Director and Co-Founder Dr. Terje Wimberger to find out more.
The company has developed an electromagnetic sample preparation platform designed to enable rapid, automated and selective detection of analytes in complex human samples.
The patent-pending method uses cutting-edge dielectric materials to couple an electric field to liquids without electrochemistry, inducing highly targeted electrodynamic effects that allow for the selective isolation of specific target cells within complex samples.
Simply put, an electrical current destroys blood cells, exposing the pathogens that cause sepsis so they can be rapidly tested.
The technology involves exposing blood samples to a rapidly oscillating electric current, the intensity and frequency of which can be adjusted to destroy unwanted “background” in a human sample, allowing for a more targeted test of the pathogens that need to be screened for.
How does this actually work?
The company has developed the “Cellectric Base Station,” which it calls a Wi-Fi router for mobile phones.
It’s a hardware cartridge that can be used in machines the company has developed and in future commercially available lab equipment.
The doctor will draw 10ml of blood as normal and inject it into a cartridge loaded into the device.
Wimberger elaborated, “The machine is mostly off-the-shelf, with the exception of a few proprietary parts. It basically consists of a printed circuit board (PCB) and software; the magic is in the cartridge.”
Within 20 minutes, most of the contained white and red blood cells are destroyed, while the pathogens of concern remain intact and concentrated into a smaller mass.
Additionally, this fully automated platform easily integrates into existing workflows, providing a fully automated solution that increases efficiency at the clinical point of care.
From Academic to Lifesaving
Cellectric Biosciences is a spin-out company from the Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria’s largest research institution.
Wimberger explained that the research, which spanned more than a decade and included extensive literature reviews and interviews with experts, identified the need for new diagnostic techniques.
“We looked at the need to be able to diagnose more quickly and identified the problem of isolating pathogens in blood – how do you get rid of the blood?
How do we physically purify a sample? After exploring different techniques and possibilities, we realized that electric fields might be the answer.”
“After much trial and error, we found a way to combine an electric field inside the liquid to specifically target the cells we want to eliminate. Now we can easily remove pathogens from the blood.”
Cellectric Biosciences aims to have data from customer partnerships by the end of 2025, enter into co-development or licensing agreements the following year, and start commercial shipments of the technology in 2027.
The company is also working with a Swiss company and clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the issue of antibiotic resistance in cystic fibrosis patients.
Of course, spinning off academic research into commercial applications is no easy feat in the medical technology field. According to Wimberger, the challenge is communication.
“When you explain what you do, people sometimes think something different. It’s hard to explain science in a few words.”
He also states:
“As academics, we are used to speaking only when we have a certain degree of certainty. But entrepreneurship is about speculation, about making statements about the future without being certain.”
But the company was fortunate to be based in Vienna, and was able to follow a familiar local path, “first securing a spinoff fellowship during university, then securing pre-seed, non-dilutive funding from the AWS PreSeed program, and going from there.”
Cellectric Biosciences’ current funding has been secured through the FFG Basis program and AWS Seed financing, as well as a private equity investment led by Xista Science Ventures.
The company’s next goal is to raise seed funding to commercialize its potentially life-saving technology.
Main image: Cellectric Biosciences. Photo: Uncredited.
