Abstract

Rapid Diagnostics of Antibiotic Resistance

Rustem Ismagilov, Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology

Rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) is critical for determining appropriate treatments and for enabling global antibiotic stewardship.  Phenotypic AST is the gold standard, but these tests are unacceptably slow, requiring pre-culture steps.  Genotypic AST methods are not sufficiently general to replace the gold standard (especially in Gram-negative organisms).  Our lab uses microfluidic digital single-molecule counting of pathogen-specific RNA and DNA to perform phenotypic AST directly from clinical samples in as fast as 30 min. Further, we have demonstrated refinements of this approach that can enable rapid AST in high-priority organisms such as Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE).