About Septomics

Why is sepsis research necessary?

Sepsis is a life-threatening systemic infection that affects people of all ages and that has a high mortality rate (over 50% among patients suffering from a severe sepsis). Thus, sepsis severely compromises the progress of medicine in many fields and consumes a major part of health care resources. Nevertheless, no significant improvement in sepsis diagnosis and therapy could be achieved over the past decades. The last two major innovations after the establishment of blood culturing in the 1880s were the introduction of antibiotics in the 1930s and the beginning of intensive care medicine about 50 years ago.
So, there is an acute world-wide need for innovative sepsis diagnostic and therapeutic products in order to accelerate the recognition of the infection, the identification of the pathogen and the beginning of an effective and individual therapy what in the end should increase the patient's chances of survival. The main prerequisite for innovations in the mentioned fields is an improved molecular "picture" of sepsis that comprises all critical aspects of the disease as they are summarized in the PIRO-concept.

The PIRO-concept

PIRO means predisposition, infection, response and organ dysfunction. This concept provides the basis for the SEPTOMICS’ research strategy. In detail, it comprises the following aspects:

• improved prophylaxis (risk stratification)
• faster diagnosis of the infection for an immediate therapy start
• faster diagnosis of the pathogen for a targeted therapy
• innovative therapeutics, that directly interfere with the host response and hence limit the degree of organ damage.

The Mission

SEPTOMICS as a joint initiative of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, the University Hospital Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans-Knoell-Insitute - dedicates itself to the exploration of septical infections considering all aspects of the PIRO-concept. Our goal is to install and establish SEPTOMICS as a cutting-edge and internationally competitive center for integrated sepsis research, thus contributing decisively towards a considerable reduction

• in the mortality of sepsis
• in the frequency of sepsis
• of the associated treatment cost.

The Realisation

Translational research brings together fundamental researchers and medical scientists in order to transfer scientific results as fast as possible to the clinical practice, thus allowing new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Vice versa, results from clinical investigations can serve as starting points for new fundamental research approaches. With such a translational approach SEPTOMICS aims to establish a completely novel structure in sepsis research: interdisciplinary and complementary state-of-the-art fundamental research on sepsis pathogens ( fungal septomics ) and the associated host response ( host septomics ) is closely connected to clinical expertise ( clinical septomics ) and efficient bioinformatics. The concept of theragnostic is thereby used to focus our research agenda. Theragnostic means the connection of diagnosis and therapy and is aimed towards a customized, highly-effective and side-effect poor therapy oriented on the invidual etiopathology.

The Partners

SEPTOMICS is scientifically supported by the following institutions:

• Friedrich Schiller University Jena
• Jena University Hospital with the Clinic for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine and the Institute of Medical Microbiology
• Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans-Knoell-Institute

Beside this SEPTOMICS is integrated into a broad network of leading national and international scientific associations, academic research groups as well as local and international industrial cooperation partners.

The Vision

SEPTOMICS strengthens Jena's already existing core competence in clinical and preclinical sepsis research and infection biology. It bundles all the present local research activities in the field and adds previously missing parts of fundamental research and translational medicine, which are essential for an innovation process in sepsis pathogen and host diagnostics and therapy. Thus, new diagnostic and therapeutic targets are to be evaluated and applied to further exploitation on the way to marketable products.
With the implementation of this novel research structure and the utilization of synergy potentials, a structured research management and a professional exploitation strategy SEPTOMICS offers all the prerequisites to turn Jena into a leading center for science development and knowledge transfer in sepsis research.