Antibiotic resistance is a major, growing threat to human health worldwide. There is an urgent need to develop easy-to-use, sensitive tests that can detect drug resistance at the bedside so that appropriate, potentially life-saving antibiotics can be prescribed without delay.

However, traditional clinical tests used to determine antibiotic resistance are based on cell culture techniques or on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays, neither of which is suitable for point-of-care diagnosis.

A team at the University of Southampton led by professor Hywel Morgan has now developed a cost-effective, highly sensitive and portable digital microfluidic device that exploits Recombinase Polymerase Amplification and on-chip fluorescence to quantitatively detect antimicrobial resistance genes in DNA extracted from patient samples. The researchers hope that the platform could form the basis of an easy-to-use, disposable device that hospitals or community doctors could use routinely to identify multiple antibiotic resistance genes in patients with serious infections, so that the optimum treatment can be started as soon as possible.

To learn more please visit:
https://www.twistdx.co.uk/en/innovation/microfluidics-lab-on-chip

Twist DX Innovators: Microfluidics

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