Dynamic antibiotic susceptibility test via a 3D microfluidic culture device

Abstract

This study presents a novel microfluidic approach to the investigation of bacterial susceptibility against antibiotics gradient concentration in a quantitative way. A linear concentration gradient of antibiotics in a microfluidic chamber is used with time-lapse photography. This approach provides high-resolution information in real time. Traditional tests for this type of study involve Clinical and Laboratory Standard Institute (CLSI) recommended test and Etest. All of these tests need different trials to present different concentrations. They can only provide either static data or few sampling points in a time-consuming way. Our approach employes a gradient generated structure to perform thousands of trials in parallel, showing the approach can give results in rapidly, efficiently and reveal the dynamics.