Nanotechnology For Fast Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global problem with serious consequences. Approximately
1.3 million people die each year from untreatable infections. The WHO predicts that this number will
increase to ~10 million per year by 2050 becoming the leading cause of death in humans. Sepsis in particular is a critical threat: approximately 3.4 million people in the EU are diagnosed with sepsis yearly, leading to 700,000 deaths (Rudd et al., 2020), underlining the urgent need for early detection and
effective treatment. Rapid Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) plays a crucial role in determining the correct type of antibiotics required to treat a patient with sepsis. The major issue with the current AST tools is that they are too slow, requiring typically between 24h to a few days.
The aim of the Nano FFAST project is to validate the performance of the rapid AST platform of SoundCell, that can report AST in 1 hour instead of 1 day, in a clinical setting. Where conventional methods rely on bacterial growth, SoundCell’s technology measures nano-movements of bacteria, making the effect of antibiotics visible in almost real time. Live cells vibrate with high amplitudes, while if they die due to the antibiotic treatment (susceptible cells) the motion stops. Nano FFAST is an important step towards the implementation of SoundCell’s rapid AST and provides additional insights into its clinical applicability. To achieve this, SoundCell closely works together with its partner Reinier Haga Medical Diagnostic Centre (RHMDC) in Delft (NL).