PHO Microbiology Rounds: CRISPR Diagnostics for Tackling Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobial resistance is a rapidly increasing and deadly global health threat that is undermining progress towards achieving UN Sustainable Development Goals related to health, food and water security, and economic growth. There is an urgent need for accurate, accessible, and rapid diagnostics that can be used in diverse settings to guide antimicrobial use and prevent the further emergence and spread of multidrug resistant pathogens. This PHO Microbiology Rounds will present on new diagnostic sensors at the interface of cell-free synthetic biology, next generation micro/nanoscale sensing systems, and engineering design for clinical and commercial translation. State-of-the-art synthetic biology techniques like isothermal cell-free lyophilized reactions and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/ Cas detection are ideally suited for the rapid identification and quantification of multidrug resistant pathogens like the deadly fungal pathogen, Candida auris. New techniques for detection of mutations have also been developed and presenters will discuss how to implement some of these sensors in rapid, low-cost sample-to-result analysis protocols.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
• Describe new diagnostic innovations emerging in the antimicrobial resistance space
• Describe how CRISPR systems can be used for nucleic acid detection and quantification
• Provide examples of cases where these diagnostics could play a critical role
• Discuss key criteria for designing and assessing diagnostics
Presenter(s): Dr. Nicole Weckman
The presentation can be found here: www.publicheal...