Background

The rapid spread of drug resistance in infectious diseases and oncology has developed into a significant threat to the global public health. Cellular resistance mechanisms in both bacteria and cancer cells include cell membrane protein modifications, intracellular drug target alterations, and the over expression of efflux pumps. The overexpression of efflux pump proteins enable cells to expel drugs rapidly from the cell interior, before these compounds can take effective action.

In recent years, the innovation of electrochemical sensors has attracted immense attention, due to their high sensitivity, rapid analysis and ability to analyze complex samples, such as urine and blood. Although no sensor for the point‐of‐care detection of antibiotic resistance has been proposed so far, electrochemical sensors have become a powerful tool in various fields, such as environmental monitoring, biotechnology, and industrial process control. Electrochemical sensors are fast, sensitive, cost effective, and allow for direct in vitro analysis of analytes in biological samples without much preparation.

Technology Overview

The technology consists of an electroanalytical method and sensors for the electro‐analytical measurement of membrane permeability (influx and/or efflux) of a cell to antibiotics and anti‐cancer drugs. This quantitative in vitro electrochemical method could be used to rapidly and reliably predict drug resistance in target cells.

Publication: Tran Le Luu et al. Electrochemical Characterization of Carboplatin at Unmodified Platinum Electrodes and its Application to Drug Consumption Studies in Ovarian Cancer Cells. Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry. Under review. 2020

Benefits

A point-of-care biosensor to identify drug resistance in patient samples will reduce health care costs and accelerate the treatment of bacterial infections as well as cancer. Such technology would advance clinical treatment from the current trial-and-error approach to the prescription of evidence-based personalized drug regimens.

Applications

Human and Veterinary Medicine: This method can be used to detect antibiotic and anti‐cancer drug resistance in patients. It could also be used as a platform for the design and development of novel pharmaceutical drug candidates that overcome drug resistance in bacteria and cancer.

Opportunity

Current proof‑of‑concept studies have been done. UM is seeking a partner to assist in further development and validation of the technology for various classes of antibiotics and chemotherapeutics.

Detection of Drug Resistance

Patents

IP Status

Seeking