Emerging Antimicrobial resistance threatens our ability to treat infection. Delay in institution of active therapy leads to adverse outcomes. Yet pervasive antimicrobial resistance undermines our ability to predict and choose active empiric antibiotic therapy on patient presentation. Current antimicrobial susceptibility testing methods require 2-3 days to identify appropriate treatments for bacterial infection. Therefore, we are in desperate need of new methods that can determine antimicrobial susceptibility without delay.
The lecture will discuss a novel platform called MAST (Microscopy-based Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing) which combines use of inkjet printing technology, advanced microscopy, and machine learning to provide antimicrobial testing results for any antimicrobial at will in hours rather than days.