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A 6-protein signature to be implemented into a rapid point-of-care diagnostic test that can distinguish between bacterial and viral infections in febrile children.

Proposed Use

A newly identified 6-protein signature consisting of SELE, IL18, NCAM1, NGAL, IFN-γ, and LG3BP enables accurate differentiation of bacterial and viral infections in febrile children. This signature will be further developed into a rapid point-of-care diagnostic test to provide faster, more reliable results than current methods. This will ensure patients receive the correct treatment sooner and overall improve patient outcomes.

Problem Addressed

Distinguishing bacterial and viral infections in febrile children remains a major clinical challenge, with many children unnecessarily receiving antibiotics, while others with severe bacterial infections are missed. Clinical symptoms alone do not reliably distinguish between infection types, and culture-based methods are slow, resource-intensive, and have low sensitivity. Although biomarkers such as C-reactive protein (CRP) are often used to diagnose bacterial infections, CRP is a non-specific marker with elevated levels in several inflammatory diseases. Thus, a faster, more accurate approach to distinguishing bacterial and viral infections in febrile children at the point-of-care is urgently needed.

Technology Overview

Pathogen infections cause changes in host protein expression due to immune system activation, with bacterial and viral infections each triggering distinct changes. The identified 6-protein signature encapsulates these different expression profiles, allowing reliable discrimination between bacterial and viral infections with greater reliability than existing signatures. This approach provides a foundation for translation into a rapid point-of-care diagnostic platform.

Benefits

• Potential for faster, more accurate diagnosis of bacterial infections, resulting in receiving treatment sooner
• Should reduce the number of febrile children being misdiagnosed
• Outperforms existing protein signatures
• Accurately identifies children with viral infection, preventing unnecessary antibiotic use
• Directly combats the rise of Antimicrobial Resistance AMR

Intellectual property information

Published - WO2025040922 (PCT) – Protein signature

Links to publications

1.A multi-platform approach to identify a blood-based host protein signature for distinguishing between bacterial and viral infections in febrile children (PERFORM): a multi-cohort machine learning study; Heather R Jackson, Judith Zandstra, Marien de Jonge, Michael Levin, Taco Kuijpers, Myrsini Kaforou, et al; 2023; Lancet Digital Health -

Inventor information

Dr Myrsini Kaforou – Associate professor in Bioinformatics in the Department of Infectious Diseases. Dr Kaforou’s research focusses on the identification of host biomarkers for infectious diseases from genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic datasets using machine learning techniques and statistical modelling.

Professor Mike Levin – Chair in Paediatrics & International Child Health in the Department of Infectious Diseases. Professor Levin works as a paediatric infectious diseases consultant and has led research on the diagnosis and treatment of a range of childhood infections, including meningococcal disease, tuberculosis, bacterial sepsis and Kawasaki disease.

Dr Taco Kuijpers – Professor in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Amsterdam UMC.

Professor Marien de Jonge – Professor of Infection and Immunity and Head of the Laboratory of Medical Immunology at Radboud University Medical Centre.

Heather Jackson – PhD student at ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ with a thesis titled “Using host “omic” datasets to better understand and diagnose paediatric infectious and inflammatory disease.”

Judith Zandstra – PhD student at Amsterdam UMC with a thesis titled “Biomarkers in febrile patients: A quest for discriminators for infectious and inflammatory disease”