Issue 24, 2022

A 3D-printed microfluidic gradient generator with integrated photonic silicon sensors for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing

Abstract

With antimicrobial resistance becoming a major threat to healthcare settings around the world, there is a paramount need for rapid point-of-care antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) diagnostics. Unfortunately, most currently available clinical AST tools are lengthy, laborious, or are simply inappropriate for point-of-care testing. Herein, we design a 3D-printed microfluidic gradient generator that automatically produces two-fold dilution series of clinically relevant antimicrobials. We first establish the compatibility of these generators for classical AST (i.e., broth microdilution) and then extend their application to include a complete on-chip label-free and phenotypic AST. This is accomplished by the integration of photonic silicon chips, which provide a preferential surface for microbial colonization and allow optical tracking of bacterial behavior and growth at a solid–liquid interface in real-time by phase shift reflectometric interference spectroscopic measurements (PRISM). Using Escherichia coli and ciprofloxacin as a model pathogen-drug combination, we successfully determine the minimum inhibitory concentration within less than 90 minutes. This gradient generator-based PRISM assay provides an integrated AST device that is viable for convenient point-of-care testing and offers a promising and most importantly, rapid alternative to current clinical practices, which extend to 8–24 h.

Graphical abstract: A 3D-printed microfluidic gradient generator with integrated photonic silicon sensors for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Jūl. 2022
Accepted
27 Okt. 2022
First published
22 Nov. 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Lab Chip, 2022,22, 4950-4961

A 3D-printed microfluidic gradient generator with integrated photonic silicon sensors for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing

C. Heuer, J. Preuss, M. Buttkewitz, T. Scheper, E. Segal and J. Bahnemann, Lab Chip, 2022, 22, 4950 DOI: 10.1039/D2LC00640E

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements