GenoSept - Pour percer les causes de la sepsie; SIRS-Lab GmbH participe ? un projet de recherche europ?en consacr? ? l'origine de la sepsie

GenoSept - To Trace the Genetic Causes of Sepsis; SIRS-Lab GmbH Participates in an European Research Project Focussed on the Genetics of Sepsis

Biotech Writers/Health Editors/Healthcare Editors/Medical Editors/Healthcare Writers

JENA, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2005--The Jena based biotechnological company SIRS-Lab announces its participation in the unique European research project GenOSept.

The ground-breaking project investigating the 'Genetics Of Sepsis and Septic Shock' was initiated by the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM).

GenOSept links intensive care clinicians from nearly all European countries with fourteen well-known academic and medical institutions.

Currently, SIRS-Lab GmbH is the only non-academic partner among the GenOSept consortium

The aim of this pioneering research project is to improve the understanding of how genetic predispositions affect the patients' outcomes from severe sepsis and septic shock.

Sepsis, also referred to as blood poisoning, is a growing medical and economic problem.

Sepsis and its consequences are the major causes of death in operative intensive care units.

In Germany only, 154.000 patients suffer from sepsis each year.

Despite modern Intensive Care Medicine, half of them dies

How patients respond to a new therapy as well as their outcome seem to be affected by their genes too.

,,It has already been known for several years, that the risk of dying of sepsis related organ failure is considerably higher if a family member of the patient had also died of an infectious disease", said Dr. Stefan Russwurm, CEO and Founder of the SIRS-Lab GmbH.

However, which genomic variations make one patient more vulnerable to inflammatory diseases than another, has not been elucidated yet

,,That's the reason, why SIRS-Lab took the challenge to discover biomarker molecules for complex inflammatory diseases and to establish a rapid and precise sepsis evaluation for clinical routine diagnostics", Russwurm added

The extensive Know-how which SIRS-Labs researchers now bring in the GenOSept Study have been gained in numeral research project supported by governmental and regional grants.

The assignment of SIRS-Lab is to identify, with the help of bio-statistical analysis, those marker molecules which will be tested on more than 6000 patients at three leading Genom Centers in Paris, Munich and Oxford.

Such an extensive study is necessary, to have sufficient statistical power for drawing firm conclusions

From the GenOSept study the scientists expect answers to imminent problems, for example why patients react differently to new therapies

The study should also deliver data on gender related sepsis mortality and morbidity.

As a further consequence, GenOSept will standardise protocols for diagnostic methods for genotyping in the different European countries and thus make the upcoming results comparable.

In the future, new therapies can be adapted to the individual course of disease of the patients

The European Union supports GenOSept by a grant from the 6th Framework Programme of RTD in the amount of several million Euro

Therewith, the EU honours on the one hand the innovative potential of the company and on the other hand the location Jena as one of the world leading centres in Sepsis research

CONTACT:

SIRS-Lab GmbH

Jena Roberto C. Wolfer, +49 (0) 3641 - 508 250

Mobile: +49 (0) 179 - 788 54 52

eMail: wolfer@sirs-lab .de

http://www.sirs-lab.de