Life-threatening sick: New rapid test being developed using samples stored at Biobank Graz

Some infections and inflammations quickly become a matter of life and death. A new rapid test, which researchers from Graz around Dr Zenz are working on, is set to identify diseases such as meningitis, sepsis or tuberculosis from just one blood sample.

The European consortium, in which Dr Zenz and other researchers from the Medical University of Graz are working, wants to develop improved diagnostics as part of the DIAMONDS project, which is based on the comparison of gene patterns in the blood samples.

Building on the previous EUCLIDS and PERFORM projects (see PERFORM Sample Cohort), the research team plans to build a “library of gene signatures” of infectious and inflammatory diseases over the next two years.

The blood samples are stored in Biobank Graz of the Med Uni Graz.

At the Medical University of Graz under the direction of Zenz, samples are also collected very selectively and the RNS sequencing of 2,000 blood samples is carried out. The blood samples are stored in Biobank Graz, the evaluation takes place in England, as Zenz described.