Anvil Diagnostics is developing a platform to rapidly quantify all types of bacteria and fungi in a sample with PCR-like workflows. Anvil is first developing an assay to guide therapy decisions for patients suspected of having sepsis. This technology is also poised to impact emerging applications in biomanufacturing and ecology.
FELLOW
Pavan Kota
Pavan Kota is the founder of Anvil Diagnostics. He will soon complete his Ph.D. in bioengineering at Rice University, where he developed Anvil’s underlying technology and a belief that data-driven science and applications will increasingly rely on new paradigms for scalable sensing. Previously, Kota earned a B.S.E. in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.
TECHNOLOGY
Critical Need
Sepsis, a condition predominantly caused by bacterial and fungal infections, kills millions of people worldwide each year. Among hundreds of possible pathogens, it currently takes days to pinpoint the specific microbe that is making a patient sick. However, survival rates for patients in septic shock drop as much as 8 percent for every hour of delay in effective treatment, forcing doctors to use broad-spectrum antibiotics and make educated guesses while waiting on lab results. Such treatment is not only inevitably ineffective for many patients, but the generic and untargeted use of antibiotics contributes to rising drug resistance. A rapid, cost-effective, and comprehensive microbial diagnostic test is critical for patients and public health.
Technology Vision
Anvil Diagnostics is developing a fundamentally new approach to microbial sensing that combines data science, DNA sensing, and microfluidics. Blood samples contain an overwhelming amount of human DNA, but microfluidics can split samples into thousands or even millions of droplets in order to isolate the DNA from individual microbes. Anvil’s DNA probes look for small snippets of DNA, take measurements from all droplets and pool them into a dataset, and calculate the quantities of all microbes in the sample. The high throughput generation and analysis of droplets with microfluidics enables quantitative results in a clinically actionable timeframe.
Potential for Impact
Today, infections are treatable if properly diagnosed, but drug resistance is rising as the discovery of new antibiotics alarmingly slows. Scalable microbial diagnostics will facilitate targeted treatment for patients and help manage a looming public health crisis. At the same time, scientists are constantly discovering new microbes and developing beneficial new applications for them—studying, optimizing, and even engineering microbial communities from the ground up. Anvil Diagnostics envisions a platform solution for rapid and cost-effective microbial sensing that will ensure the successful implementation of a host of emerging technologies.
Website
Anvil Diagnostics