Optimization of Stress-Based Microfluidic Testing for Methicillin Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus Strains
1
Center for Manufacturing Innovation, Fraunhofer USA, Brookline, MA 02446, USA
2
Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
3
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
4
Exponent, Inc., Natick, MA 01760, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Diagnostics 2018, 8(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics8020024
Received: 29 March 2018 / Revised: 11 April 2018 / Accepted: 11 April 2018 / Published: 17 April 2018
(This article belongs to the Section Point-of-Care Diagnostics and Devices)
The rapid evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens is driving the development of innovative, rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) tools as a way to provide more targeted and timely antibiotic treatment. We have previously presented a stress-based microfluidic method for the rapid determination of antibiotic susceptibility in methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In this method, stress is used to potentiate the action of antibiotics, and cell death is measured as a proxy for susceptibility. The method allows antibiotic susceptibility to be determined within an hour from the start of the antibiotic introduction. However, the relatively low dynamic range of the signal (2–10% cell response) even with high antibiotic concentrations (10–50 µg/mL) left room for the method’s optimization. We have conducted studies in which we varied the flow patterns, the media composition, and the antibiotic concentration to increase the cell death response and concordantly decrease the required antibiotic concentration down to 1–3 µg/mL, in accordance with the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute’s (CLSI) guidelines for AST breakpoint concentrations.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
antibiotic susceptibility testing; Staphylococcus aureus; MRSA; microfluidic chip; fluid shear; rapid diagnostics
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Kalashnikov, M.; Lee, J.C.; Sauer-Budge, A.F. Optimization of Stress-Based Microfluidic Testing for Methicillin Resistance in Staphylococcus aureus Strains. Diagnostics 2018, 8, 24.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
