Fast and inexpensive detection of bacterial viability and drug resistance through metabolic monitoring

Conventional methods for the detection of bacterial viability and drug resistance are either expensive, time consuming, or not definitive, and thus do not provide all the information sought by the medical professionals. Here, we solve these problems by introducing an innovative detection method to produce rapid and accurate diagnosis of bacterial infection through miniaturization and parallelization. This method is demonstrated with wells of several shapes (square, circle), diameters (100 - 1000μm) and depths (≤100 μm). In the development of proof of concept, we use laboratory strain of E.coli as the model pathogen. The integration of the fluorescent oxygen sensor, ruthenium tris (2,2´-diprydl) dichloride hexahydrate (RTDP), allows us to monitor the dissolved oxygen concentration as a measure of bacterial metabolism. Detection time of the bacteria within the microwells can be as fast as a few of hours (4-5hrs), with concentrations that vary between 10² to 10⁸ cells/mL. Adding the appropriate drug to the broth and measuring growth through fluorescence also probed drug resistance. This reported method for microfabrication of the wells, is rapid, economical, versatile and simple.