Ronny Möller

• A fast and reliable diagnosis is the key factor in the management of patients with infectious diseases. Most diagnostic samples are sent to central laboratories, which are equipped with extensive laboratory infrastructure and staffed with highly trained personnel. This leads to very reliable results. However the turnaround time, i.e., the time from taking the sample from the patient to the time until the physician gets the result, can be hours to days. Therefore, there is an urgent need for fast and reliable diagnostic systems near the patient (at the physician’s office, in small hospitals, in emergency rooms, etc.) that are optimized for highly reliable and fast diagnosis. Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics attempt to bring the diagnostic near the side of the patient. The aim of this doctoral thesis “Pathogen Detection on Point-of-Care Systems” was to develop and optimize biochemical procedures needed for the fast and reliable POC molecular diagnostic systems for pathogen detection near the patient. The PhD study was part of multiple externally funded projects dealing with the development of in-vitro diagnostic systems near patient. The work packages of this thesis comprised (i) the engineering and production of an inhibitor tolerant DNA Polymerase, (ii) the development, optimization and combination of Nested-PCR based detection assays for sexually transmitted diseases (STD) pathogen panel, a bacterial respiratory panel and a VRE panel, (iii) the development of a pretreatment and inhibitor tolerant pre-amplification buffers, (iiii) the implementation of the reaction chemistry into an POC workflow. The principal suitability of the direct PCR workflow, developed during this PhD thesis for POC molecular diagnostic testing, could be demonstrated.