Mass Spectrometry profiling of Bacteria with IR-desorption ionization on chemically functionalized porous silicon surfaces coupled to electrospray. Towards an early detection of sepsis. – MOONSTONE

Sepsis, blood bacteremic infection, is one of the first mortality cause in hospitalized patients. Survival chance decline by 7% each hour, while diagnostic required 5 days. There is an urgent need for rapid diagnosis strategies. This project aims at developing a state-of-the-art portable platform for sepsis diagnosis for efficient antibiotic treatment and tackling antibiotics over-use. The success of the platform will rely on the elaboration of chemically functionalized porous silicon surfaces and on the development of a time-of-flight based mass spectrometry in the high mass range using mid-IR desorption and an electrospray ionization source. The spectral fingerprint obtained will document a database of reference spectra in the high mass range. The developed ionization source with mass-spectrometry based transportable devices will be installed in hospital. Its integration will be considered for instrumentation purposes as diagnostic tool integrated into test portfolio.