(596f) A Novel Inductively Coupled Capacitor Wireless Sensor System for Rapid Detection of Bacterial Growth and Antibiotic Susceptibility

Sepsis caused 11 million deaths globally each year. It is paramount that the diagnosis of sepsis is rapid and accurate, study shows that the 96-hour survival rate for antibiotic treatment administered at just 15 hours is only 13.3%. Microbial culturing and Sepsis-Related Organ Failure Assessment are the current leading tools in sepsis diagnosis. Unfortunately, these methods are time consuming and/or lack the capability to identify the causative species and their antibiotic susceptibility. Before the causal pathogens are identified, patients are put on an aggressive empiric antibiotics treatment, which causes adverse side effects and promote the development of antibiotic resistance. The urgent needs for rapid antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) motivated us to develop a new rapid phenotypical assay of antibiotic susceptibility. Here we present a new electrochemical biosensor based on magnetically coupled LC sensors for rapid AST. The engineered LC sensors can be placed in 96 well plates and communicate the reading wirelessly with a receiver coil for signal analysis. The sensors demonstrated rapid detection of growth of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in 30 mins, and thus the antibiotic susceptibility to different antibiotics. Drug-resistant strains were used as controls. To our best knowledge, this is by far the quickest AST at phenotype level. This rapid AST has the potential for low-cost point-of-care applications.