Open Droplet Microfluidics for Testing Multi-Drug Resistance and Antibiotic Resilience in Bacteria

Taejoon Kong, Nicholas Backes, Gregory Phillips, Santosh Pandey

New combinations of existing antibiotics are being investigated to combat bacterial resilience. This requires detection technologies with reasonable cost, accuracy, resolution, and throughput. Here, we present a multi -drug screening platform for bacterial cultures by combining droplet microfluidics, search algorithms, and imaging with a wide field of view. We remotely alter the chemical microenvironment around cells and test 12 combinations of resistant cell types and chemicals. Fluorescence intensity readouts allow us to infer bacterial resistance to specific antibiotics within 8 hours. The platform has potential to detect and identify parameters of bacterial resilience in cell cultures, biofilms, and microbial aggregates. https://doi.org/10.1109/Transducers50396.2021.9495667