Diagnostics
Microfluidic systems excel whenever rapid, and cost-efficient tests are required. However, as many microfluidic technologies rely on low throughput fabrication procedures and bulky, expensive equipment, they are generally limited to centralized labs. Nonetheless, there is a strong need for diagnostic tests at the point of care (POC) to provide information for patients in resource-poor settings and during an emergency. The Bioanalytics Lab is extending the impact of our microanalytical tools by performing readouts with portable equipment on mass-producible microfluidic chips.
The emergence of the antimicrobial resistance against the commonly used antibiotic compounds represents a major threat to global health. To address the decrease in the effectiveness of the available antibiotic treatments, there is an urgent need for faster diagnostic tools, an improved understanding of the resistance-related processes, and the discovery of new antibiotics.
In our 2021 publication by P. Jusková et al., we successfully demonstrated possibility to obtain resistance profiles of analyzed Escherichia coli cells within 2–3 h using innovative viability determination based on measuring changes of dissolved oxygen levels in the bacterial micro-cultures. Moreover, developed micro-chamber array was simple to use and compatible with mass-production. The chamber array was made out of a cyclic olefin copolymer (COC), using a protocol optimized by A. Kling.
Selected Reference
P. Jusková, S. Schmitt, A. Kling, D. G. Rackus, M. Held, A. Egli and P. S. Dittrich:
Real-Time Respiration Changes as a Viability Indicator for Rapid Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing in a Microfluidic Chamber Array,
ACS Sensors, 6 (2021), 2202–2210, external pagelink.