MDI Bioscience
From Discovery to Diagnosis: MDI Bioscience and a New Biomarker for Sepsis
- July 2, 2026
Last year, MDI Biological Laboratory President Hermann Haller, M.D., postdoctoral researcher Yannic Becker, Ph.D., and their colleagues identified a little-known molecule that turns out to play a surprisingly important role in keeping blood vessels healthy, called Heparanase 2.
Yannic Becker, Ph.D.
Now they are working with collaborators at UNC Chapel Hill and the University of Alabama at Birmingham to leverage that insight to explore new methods to diagnose and forestall dangerous blood vessel conditions before they grow acute, including sepsis.
Hpa2 acts as a natural guardian of a delicate coating of sugar-based molecules that line the inside of blood vessels, called the glycocalyx. A functioning glycocalyx is key to maintaining a pervasive blood vessel network, dense with multi-fingered branches, that help to deliver life-giving oxygen and nutrients to every tissue in the body.
Haller thinks of the glycocalyx as the oil that keeps the vasculature running smoothly.
“There are millions and millions of small blood vessels nurturing our whole body everywhere,” Haller says. “These blood vessels adapt continuously to the metabolic needs of our body. To keep this network as dense and functioning as possible is the secret of health and longevity.”
Using the zebrafish — a workhorse of MDI Bio Lab’s research in comparative biology — Haller and his team found that when Hpa2 is present and functioning in the glycocalyx, it blocks the potentially damaging activities of inflammatory enzymes, and blood vessels maintain their integrity.
When Hpa2 is absent, vessel walls become leaky, allowing fluid and molecules to spill into surrounding tissue in ways that can drive chronic disease and acute conditions such as sepsis.
Remove Hpa2, and blood vessels leak. Restore it, and they don’t. That finding was fundamental science: a careful characterization of a molecule whose importance had largely been overlooked.
The natural next question was: what does this mean for human disease, and can we do something about it? They suspected that sepsis, in particular, might be a fruitful area for initial study, and for potential clinical applications of their discovery.
Now, working within the Laboratory’s translational research initiative, MDI Bioscience, Haller, Becker and their UNC and Alabama colleagues have published new work in the journal Glycobiology, describing a method for detecting heparanase activity directly in blood plasma, a step that could eventually allow clinicians to identify, early and accurately, when the vascular wall is under attack.
Sepsis is a life-threatening immune response to infection that can spiral into organ failure with little warning. It kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, and outcomes depend on how quickly it is caught.
Early sepsis is hard to distinguish from other conditions, particularly in children, whose normal vital signs, such as heart rate, breathing rate, and temperature already fluctuate widely with age and can mimic the early warning signs of serious infection.
“The measures and biomarkers we have at the moment are all measures which can only be taken relatively late in the game,” Haller says. “Once they are there, the patient is already on the way out.”
Haller says the new work suggests that Heparanase 1, the enzyme that Hpa2 normally keeps in check, may arise earlier in the inflammatory sepsis cascade than conventional markers (such as lactate), making it a candidate as a more effective biomarker for the risk of sepsis.
The researchers developed an assay method, dubbed SHS-IDMS, to quantify heparanase activity in a blood plasma sample with new precision. The team validated the approach in plasma from mice and eventually using human samples from pediatric sepsis patients.
The results were powerful: They measured heparanase 1 activity in septic cases at nearly four times the levels seen in control samples.
Haller and the Lab have filed a patent application covering the new Heparanase 1 biomarker identification process and the beneficial effects of Hpa2.
The move from zebrafish to mouse models to human clinical samples reflects a deliberate progression. MDI Bioscience was established to bridge this gap between a discovery made at the lab bench and a tool or therapy that can be used at the bedside.
But as Haller notes, testing a new method across larger and more diverse patient populations takes time, and the path from a filed patent to an approved clinical assay is long.
“Clinical innovations can take years, even decades before they are widely adopted,” Haller says. “But that progression from fundamental discovery to real-world health improvements is what MDI Bioscience is built to support.”