Researchers at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON, Canada) have demonstrated the ability to produce accurate, reliable results of bacterial infection tests in less than an hour. Using a handheld rapid testing system, this can be done right from the doctor’s office.
Created by a team of engineers, biochemists, and medical researchers, the DNA-based technology eliminates the need to send samples to a lab and thus eliminates waiting time for patients. The study found the technology is particularly effective in diagnosing urinary tract infections from real clinical samples;1 they are now working to adapt it to detect other forms of bacteria as well as the rapid detection of viruses, including COVID-19.
“This technology is very versatile and we’re getting very close to using the same technology for COVID-19 testing,” says study co-author Yingfu Li, a professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences and a member of McMaster’s Michael Groote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. He noted that detecting markers of cancer is also being investigated.
“It’s going to mean that patients can get better treatment, faster results, and avoid serious complications,” says Leyla Soleymani, the paper’s co-corresponding author and an associate professor of engineering physics. “It can also avoid the unnecessary use of antibiotics, which is something that can buy us time in the battle against antimicrobial resistance.”
The handheld device is similar to a blood glucose monitor: A microchip analyzes a droplet of bodily fluid such as blood, urine, or saliva, according to the study, “using molecules that can detect the specific protein signature of an infection.” The device is about the size of a USB drive and plugs into smartphones—the results are displayed there.
A team led by study co-author Soleymani, who is also the Canada Research Chair in Miniaturized Biomedical Devices, developed electrochemical engineering technology that was combined with biochemical technology created by Li and postdoctoral researcher Dingran Chang. Also involved in the process was infectious disease clinician Marek Smeija, a McMaster professor of medicine who provided samples from real patients, and Todd Hoare, a professor of chemical engineering.
Specifically, the new technology distinguishes strains of the same bacteria that traditionally is treated with antibiotics—according to the research team, this is “a critical distinction that can help battle the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR.”
“Clinicians identified testing delays as a problem that needed to be resolved,” Soleymani says. “We wanted to build a system that could give as much information as possible to the physician during the patient’s first visit.”
Currently, the process requires that medical professionals send samples to laboratories to be cultured, which can take days. Providing immediate results to patients can reduce the spread of infection, according to the researchers, as well as improve patients’ quality of life and simplify the work of busy clinicians. Reference: R. Pandey et al., Nat. Chem. (2021); http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00718-x.
