Guilford CT, USA – 17 September 2024: New England Hemolytics is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a National Science Foundation SBIR Phase 1 research grant to advance our novel whole blood extraction technology. Under this research grant, nine species of common sepsis pathogens will be tested for sensitivity and specificity of detection in venous whole blood samples. NEH will use our novel XB100 extraction instrument and cartridges, and “just add water” PCR kits, provided by BioGX, to assess and optimize the performance of our novel pathogen DNA extraction system. The goal is to demonstrate that our XB100 platform, with its 100x pathogen DNA concentration factor, 10,000x human DNA reduction factor, and PCR friendly eluate, is well-suited to enable common molecular analysis methods to directly detect and identify bacterial and fungal causes of sepsis, with sensitivity similar to blood culture, within one hour. This level of performance would potentially revolutionize the diagnosis of sepsis-causing blood infections, since blood culture, the current standard-of-care, takes 12 hours to 5 days or more, while morbidity increases by 7% for every one hour that correct treatment is delayed.Sepsis affects 1.7 million people per year in the U.S. with an estimated 250k fatalities. More than $37B is spent each year diagnosing and treating sepsis and the resulting complications.New England Hemolytics would like to thank the National Science Foundation for supporting this important and potentially highly impactful technology development.