ESCMID 2026 Poster: An assay for the detection of sepsis pathogens directly from whole blood samples

Bloodstream Infection (BSI) or sepsis is a life-threatening condition that affects more than 48 million people worldwide and contributes to approximately 11 million deaths per year. Timely identification of the responsible pathogen and potential antimicrobial drug resistance (AMR) is paramount for administration of proper treatment and patient survival. Current standard of care relies on blood culture methods and remains a manual process, with highly variable time to result. DNAe has developed a direct from whole-blood sample-to-result, NGS-based, BSI/AMR assay. Using DNAe’s assay workflow and sequencing technology we have achieved a quasi-universal breadth of coverage of over ~7,400 bacterial and ~800 fungal species and 26 common AMR markers. Here we demonstrate the performance of our proprietary assay (manual format), and specifically the (DNAe) sequencing and analysis pipeline components of the workflow.