Ultra-robuste Lipid-Membran basierte Nanoporensensoren
Lead partner:
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
Scientific management:
Jakob Andersson
Additional participating institutions:
CEST Kompetenzzentrum für elektrochemische Oberflächentechnologie
CEST Kompetenzzentrum für elektrochemische Oberflächentechnologie
Research field:
Biophysik
Funding tool: Basic research projects
Project-ID: LS19-026
Project start: 01. Jänner 2021
Project end: will follow
Runtime: 36 months / finished
Funding amount: € 290.000,00
Brief summary:
Infections with drug-resistant bacteria are a significant threat to global health systems, in part resulting from overuse of antibiotics, particularly broad spectrum antibiotics. The World Health Organisation has issued severe warnings, highlighting an urgent need for new antibiotics and more stringent stewardship of existing antibiotics.
One of the first clinical decisions that must be made when a patient presents with a bacterial infection concerns the choice of antimicrobial treatment. It is critical that the correct decision is made because otherwise the patient is exposed to the side effects of antibiotic treatments while the infection continues to progress. This may result in patients requiring intensive care at hospitals and further antibiotic therapy, causing both unnecessary hardship for the patient and costs for public health systems. It is estimated that antibiotic resistance causes 33,000 deaths per year in Europe and costs public healthcare systems an estimated 1.5 billion €. A low-cost and robust point of care device designed to rapidly detect the presence of antibiotic resistance genes would aid clinical decisions to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.
Optical methods require expensive equipment and are therefore unsuitable for point-of-care applications. Electrochemical systems have been shown to be selective, sensitive and relatively cheap and have therefore been predicted since the early 2000s to become available, no such device currently exists. We will establish a method of detecting selected antibiotic resistance genes based on a DNA nanopore embedded in a model membrane architecture. This work will serve as a foundation to develop a microfluidic point-of-care device containing a multiplexed array of nanopores capable of rapidly detecting antibiotic resistance genes in a clinical setting.
Keywords:
Biosensing, Analytical Chemistry, Nanotechnology