MicroBplex, Inc. is an in vitro diagnostics biotechnology company based in Atlanta, GA. We formed MicroBplex to develop and commercialize a novel patent – pending diagnostic technology conceived by our scientific founders, Drs. Frances Eun-Hyung Lee (Emory University) and John L. Daiss (University of Rochester), based on detecting nascent antibody secreting cells (ASCs).
ASCs arise early and circulate in blood as the first indication of immune recognition following exposure to an infectious agent and disappear from blood circulation once the infectious agent is no longer present.
We are initially applying our novel technology to settings where:
- diagnostic information is essential for effective early therapeutic intervention,
- discriminating infection from colonization and acute infection from prior infection are important to therapeutic decision making,
- knowledge of patient immune protection status is a significant determinant of patient follow-up and prophylaxis to prevent recurrent infection, or
- obtaining a patient specimen that contains the infectious agent is not possible or difficult and/or costly or exposes patients to unacceptable risk.
Our first products are directed to:
- Lyme disease, where we provide earlier detection than current diagnostic products, an assessment of therapeutic effectiveness, and distinguish new infection from prior infections, and
- Clostridium difficile infection, where we distinguish infection from colonization and identify patients that produce protective immunity and therefore are not at risk for disease recurrence and do not require costly prophylaxis.