Sepsis a serious life-threatening condition resulting from a harmful inflammatory reaction of the body due to bacterial infection. The mortality rate of sepsis remains high in intensive care units around the world but therapeutic interventions have been largely unsuccessful. Clearly, there is a great need for inventing efficacious therapeutic drugs to treat patients with sepsis associated illnesses. Increasing evidence indicates that aberrant apoptosis (programmed cell death) plays a key role in sepsis-related death but currently no drugs to prevent apoptosis in sepsis are available for clinical use. A soluble receptor protein has been demonstrated for its survival effects in animal lethality induced by apoptosis. Moreover, the level of this protein was significantly elevated in human cells in response to bacterial antigens and in sera of patients with bacterial infections thus indicating that the protein might play an important role in the pathogenesis of bacterial infection and sepsis. Therefore, we propose to accomplish 2 goals in this Phase I SBIR study. First, we propose to develop a high quality recombinant receptor protein so that the protein can be safe and effective for clinical use. Second, to evaluate the future therapeutic potential of the protein to treat septic patients, we propose to test whether the protein provides a survival advantage in an animal model of sepsis. Undoubtedly, our phase I SBIR studies will enhance our ability to advance to future SBIR studies designed to further evaluate the efficacy of the protein in clinical settings. If this soluble receptor protein can be effective for treating patients with sepsis, this will increase the success rate of therapy thus reducing the burden of medical care costs, as well as enhancing the quality of the patients' life. ? ?
