Life Sciences & Biotechnology
Title : | Urine Tract Infections and Antimicrobial susceptibility - A fight against Superbugs |
Area of research : | Life Sciences & Biotechnology |
Focus area : | Microbiology |
Principal Investigator : | Dr. Suhanya Duraiswamy, Indian Institute Of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad, Telangana |
Timeline Start Year : | 2024 |
Timeline End Year : | 2027 |
Contact info : | suhanya@che.iith.ac.in |
Details
Executive Summary : | Urine Tract Infection (UTI) involves the infiltration of microbes into the sterile urine tract anywhere from the urethra (urethiritis), bladder (cystitis), ureters (ureteritis) to the kidneys (pyelonephritis) and is the most common bacterial infections worldwide affecting 40-50% of women and 5% men. The annual cost of UTI treatment in the US has been estimated at $ 2.14 billion. Besides these economic factors, the other socioeconomic consequences of UTI include renal scarring in children, premature delivery in pregnant women and sepsis in adult patients. The propensity of these infections to recur (rUTI) aggravates the problem greatly since it is estimated that more than 25% of women endure second infection within 6 months of the initial infection and 3% experience a third attack. Antimicrobials (AM) are the primary treatment modalities for UTI in point of care settings and prescribing broad spectrum antibiotics is the norm. This is due to the non-availability of diagnostic tools that provide the antimicrobial susceptibility profiles (ASP) for the infecting pathogen in point of care settings. This has eventually led to UTI being one of the primary causes of Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the advent of ‘Superbugs’. Advances in molecular diagnosis has led to rapid increase in tools that use nucleic acid-based methods for ASP of pathogen from urine. These tests are relatively fast (completes the diagnosis within few hours compared to culture-based gold standards which typically take few days for diagnosis and AS testing) and are able to detect non-cultivable and nonviable pathogen. However, the eukaryotic DNA (cell free DNA) inside and outside cells (such as RBCs/WBCs) and protein in the infected urine interferes and inhibits the PCRs. In addition, the library of genes for antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) are limited and not useful for newly acquired mutations. Hence, pre-treatment of samples where the pathogen in them are isolated before further processing is crucial and dictate the sensitivity and viability of the toolkit; Thus, an urgent and critical requirement for the rapid, sensitive and cost-effective technique for pathogen isolation and AST exists. Hence, I propose a protein coated magnetic nanoparticle based segmented microfluidic method for selective isolation of pathogen from urine followed by a droplet microflow based antimicrobial susceptibility testing platform. The novelty of the proposal lies in the microfluidic mixing and segmenting strategy that typically lead to rapid mixing and improved turbidity within microliter droplets (in the AST step) thereby reducing the pathogen sequester time and AST time respectively by several folds. |
Total Budget (INR): | 43,48,696 |
Organizations involved