Spectral Medical Sponsored Webinar: Endotoxin, The Phantom Menace of Sepsis

Debra M. Foster, BSc, spent 11 years as an RN in the adult critical care area. Thereafter, Debra joined the critical care clinical research team at Toronto General Hospital. She was project lead for a multi-national, multi-center clinical trial - the MEDIC study. The data was used for a successful 510(k) de novo submission to the FDA for the Endotoxin Activity Assay (EAA). It was the first IVD for sepsis. Debra went on to follow the device to its commercial partner, Spectral Medical, Inc. She became VP of Clinical Development in 2011.  Debra led many clinical research projects, including the MEDIC, EUPHRATES, and TIGRIS clinical trials, aimed at endotoxin in critical illness. Currently, Debra is a clinical consultant for Spectral Medical. She has lectured to medical professionals on the topics of sepsis, endotoxin, and clinical trials for sepsis and has been a co-author of more than 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals.  

Mark A. Tidswell, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at UMASS Chan Medical School – Baystate. Trained asa pulmonary and critical care physician, his clinical practice is adult critical care and neurocritical care at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA. He began work in multi-center clinical trials 25 years ago. He was an active contributor to the NHLBI research networks ARDSnet and PETAL from 2000 – 2024, which studied thousands of patients with ARDS, sepsis, and COVID-19. He serves as site PI for pharmaceutical trials in the area of sepsis and ARDS and has 20 years of experience using the Endotoxin Activity Assay to identify endotoxemia in patients in clinical trials. Dr. Tidswell was an investigator in the EUPHRATES trial and is part of the scientific steering committee for the TIGRIS study. He is a co-author and contributor to more than 90 publications.