"Rapid Identification and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of Bacteria: 2009"
Alan Hunt, PhD, Duane Newton, PhD, and Brandon McNaughton, PhD
Second year of funding - 2009 funding: $100,000; funding to date $200,000
Emergent antimicrobial resistance in bacteria is one of the world's most pressing health problems, and a major contributor to patient morbidity and mortality. Both the generation of new resistant strains and adverse effects of existing strains are effectively combated through accurate diagnosis and susceptibility testing of the specific pathogen responsible for an infection. But this is impeded by the slow turnaround of existing tests, two-four days. The team is fine-tuning an instrument that can perform identification and rapid antimicrobial resistance measurements on the time-scale of hours, substantially outperforming existing diagnostics.
The development of new antibiotics provides one avenue to address resistance, but alone this has proven to be a partial and temporary remedy in the ongoing battle against increased antimicrobial resistance. Instead, both new antimicrobials and technologies that will allow physicians to quickly determine appropriate antimicrobial therapy need to be developed. With current clinical instruments requiring several days to obtain results, there is a clear need to develop rapid means of identifying bacteria and determining their respective susceptibility to antibiotics, on the time-scale of hours rather than days. Fast methods for identifying antibiotic susceptibility are thus needed both to improve the efficacy of therapy, and to impede the severe health problems caused by rising bacterial resistance.
James Ashton-Miller, PHD, the Albert Schultz Collegiate Research Professor and Distinguished Research Scientist in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and a Research Professor at the Institute of Gerontology in the Department of Internal Medicine, was honored in August, 2009 with the Borelli Award by the American Society of Biomechanics at its annual meeting. This is the most prestigious honor given by the American Society of Biomechanics and recognizes outstanding career accomplishment. It is awarded annually to an investigator who has conducted exemplary research in any area of biomechanics.
More Faculty News >>Adam Maxwell, BME Ph.D. student working with Professor Zhen Xu, won the Student Paper Competition at IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium, Sep 20-23, Rome, Italy, for his paper entitled "The role of compressional pressure in formation of dense bubble clouds in histotripsy". IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium is a prestigious conference in the field of ultrasound research. The student paper competition starting 1991 is designed to encourage active student participation and reward outstanding work. Adam's paper challenged the widely believed concept that peak rarefactional pressure is the only important factor for cavitation bubble generation. His paper presents strong evidence that peak compressional pressure plays an important role in cavitating bubble cloud generateion. Acoustic cavitation refers to bubble activity induced by ultrasound and have implication in numerous clinical and industrial applications.
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