Towards a Rapid, Hand-Held Biosensor-Based Detector for Clostridium Difficile
University of Bath: Pedro Estrela
University of Bristol: Martin Cryan, Andrei Sarua
Cardiff University: Adrian Porch (PI), Les Baillie, Niek Buurma, Simon Pope
University of Exeter: William Leslie Barnes
Tracy Wotherspoon, Microsemi Ltd. (industrial partner)
Background
The main impact of our project will be in healthcare, where we propose to tackle the major societal problem of antibiotic resistance by developing a rapid detector for bacterial infection (in our case for Clostridium difficile) that will lead to its appropriate treatment. The Chief Medical Officer of England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has stated that “Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat. If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics.”
Clostridium difficile infection usually presents itself as diarrhoea and is commonly associated with previous antibiotic use, mainly affecting the elderly and debilitated. In 2012 alone there were 1,646 CDI deaths in England and Wales (0.8% of all hospital deaths). Public Health England (PHE) has stated that, “In order to continue to tackle Clostridium difficile infections, additional interventions in the community, primary care and acute Trusts will need to be identified and actioned.”
This is what our detector hopes to realise – a diagnostic bedside test with a turnaround time of 10 minutes would not delay the appropriate management of patients for both antibiotic treatment and implementation of infection control procedures.
This community previously received Initiator Funding for the project: GW4 Biosensor Network
Project summary
This community derived from an initiator award which formed the GW4 Biosensor Network. This Accelerator Award was used to develop a better understanding of the challenges and demands of a point-of-care diagnostic device for Clostridium difficile. The funds were primarily used to employ PDRAs at Cardiff, Bristol and Bath to conduct experimental proof-of-concept work to test and refine the detection techniques and device capability. The community also coordinated a Biosensors Workshop and coordinated visits and management meetings between the GW4 institutes to explore potential collaborations and new directions for the pilot work. The community continue to collaborate with further GW4 Biosensors workshops and meetings as well as grant applications.
