Precision Medicine for Neonatal Sepsis

Sherrianne Ng, Tobias Strunk, Pingping Jiang, Tik Muk, Per T. Sangild, Andrew Currie

Neonatal sepsis remains a significant cause of morbidity and mortality especially in the preterm infant population. The ability to promptly and accurately diagnose neonatal sepsis based on clinical evaluation and laboratory blood tests remains challenging. Advances in high-throughput molecular technologies have increased investigations into the utility of transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches as diagnostic tools for neonatal sepsis. A systems-level understanding of neonatal sepsis, obtained by using omics-based technologies (at the transcriptome, proteome or metabolome level), may lead to new diagnostic tools for neonatal sepsis. In particular, recent omic-based studies have identified distinct transcriptional signatures and metabolic or proteomic biomarkers associated with sepsis. Despite the emerging need for a systems biology approach, future studies have to address the challenges of integrating multi-omic data with laboratory and clinical meta-data in order to translate outcomes into precision medicine for neonatal sepsis. Omics-based analytical approaches may advance diagnostic tools for neonatal sepsis. More research is needed to validate the recent systems biology findings in order to integrate multi-dimensional data (clinical, laboratory and multi-omic) for future translation into precision medicine for neonatal sepsis. This review will discuss the possible applications of omics-based analyses for identification of new biomarkers and diagnostic signatures for neonatal sepsis, focusing on the immune-compromised preterm infant and considerations for clinical translation.