Bangalore: With the advent of monsoons, India is plagued by diseases such as Leptospirosis, dengue, malaria. The difficulties associated with their prolonged treatment apart, these diseases are challenging to treat because of the lack of quick and definitive tools to diagnose them. XCyton Diagnostics' Syndrome Evaluation System offers to make diagnosis simpler for the treatment of such diseases. The company plans to extend distribution of its new platform to the metro cities of the country by end of this year.

Launched earlier this year for diagnosing critical care infections, the SES platform can help diagnose a host of infectious diseases. The idea behind the SES is to simultaneously detect multiple pathogens. This is facilitated by performing a multiplex amplification followed by detection of the amplified product using reverse dot-blot assay. Primers used for the amplification are designed using virulent specific genes of each pathogen. The amplified products (amplicons) thus obtained are hybridized on an SES platform embedded with signature specific probes for each of the pathogen. The hybridized amplicon probe mixture is detected by an enzymatic reaction that will yield a visible colored spot.

Dr B V Ravi Kumar, founder, chairman and MD of Xcyton, says, "SES is a miraculous and powerful tool that can be employed to diagnose a variety of diseases that claim lives of numerous people in India." In conversation with BioSpectrum, Dr Kumar added that XCyton would be be on an expansion spree, so that these diagnostic services are made available in all the major metros by the end of this year.

XCyton's SES for sepsis or blood poisoning will also be used for the judicious diagnosis of secondary infections, that occur as a result of dengue and chikungunya, in merely seven hours. Additionally, acute encephalitis syndrome, which is endemic in certain districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, states in northern India, can also be diagnosed with the help of SES. The brief period, when the initial symptoms are experienced, is extremely crucial and hence requires appropriate and explicit diagnosis to avert the painful and expensive ordeal that follows closely. Other infections, such as whole enteroviral infections that claim lives of numerous infants as a result of heart and liver failure can be easily detected through XCyton's avant-garde- SES.