The misuse and overuse of antimicrobials is a major driver of resistance. Among other factors associated with misuse/overuse is that clinicians often have insufficient information to prescribe the most appropriate course of treatment. For example, using clinical symptoms alone, it is difficult to distinguish bacterial infections - which can be treated with antibiotics - from viral infections - for which antibiotics should not be prescribed. Diagnostics are critical to such decision-making and the avoidance of misuse by providing information on the pathogen and its level of resistance, information on the host immune system, or the dosing required for individual patients.
At Imperial, interdisciplinary teams made up of clinicians, biologists and engineers work to develop new diagnostic technologies, which will be invaluable tools for combatting AMR.
Example technologies and programmes include:
- Novel, point-of care diagnostics solutions, called Dragonfly and Lacewing, for the detection of infectious diseases. These technologies are suitable for use in low resource and remote settings and are been developed and validated for a range of human, environmental and veterinary applications.
- Professor Pantelis Georgiou, Dr Jesus Rodriguez Manzano, Dr Aubrey Cunnington, Dr Ivana Pennisi, Dr Nick Moser
- Read more: Digital Diagnostics for African Health Systems and Digital Diagnostics for TB (section 6 of the link)
- ProtonDx: An Imperial spinout company established in 2020 to commercialise diagnostic solutions, including Lacewing and Dragonfly, for thee detection of infectious diseases.
- Dr Jesus Rodriguez Manzano, Professor Pantelis Georgiou, Dr Nick Moser, Dr Ivana Pennisi
- Host RNA-based diagnostics for bacterial and viral infection, TB, inflammatory diseases
- Host biomarkers of infectious disease (metabolomic and transcriptomic)
- DNA Nudge: 60 minutes Covid-19 Tests; AMR for infectious diseases – point of decision technology. Antibiotic stewardship, TB, STI’s, Respiratory, and diabetic Foot infection.
- DNA Electronics (DNAe): Point of care sequencing for AMR in Sepsis, using semi-conductors.
- Professor Chris Toumazou
- Visit the site: https://www.dnae.com/
- Lipid fingerprint-based MALDI-ToF-based diagnostics for mycobacterial infections
- HIV Quant: HIV close-to-care and point-of-care assay development
- AMR Diagnostics Developer Directory (ADDD) to facilitate exchange of ideas in the field
- Microneedle biosensors to accurately detect patient antibiotic levels in real-time
- Diagnostics and analysis of tuberculosis drug resistance
- Evaluation of rapid diagnostics
- Developing novel diagnostics to develop personalised medicine in sepsis
- Fungal diagnostics, novel precision diagnostics, immunodiagnostics
- Biologically relevant diagnostic infection signatures
- Using treatment decision algorithms for child TB diagnostics, using host omics approaches for child TB decision-making
Centres and networks with a focus on diagnostics for AMR:
