This team successfully won a Discovery Award seed-funding grant to help further develop their ideas for their Longitude Prize application and create a diagnostic test  that helps solve the problem of global antibiotic resistance. Below we have asked them to explain their test and motivation for applying.

Please explain your test.

The cAST team is developing a new imaging device to perform rapid point-of-care diagnosis of antibiotic resistant bacteria for urinary tract infections. Our device will be a sample-in/result-out automated device requiring no trained technician and generating antibiotic susceptibility reports directly on urine samples. This will immensely improve clinical diagnostics, reduce healthcare costs and save lives. Just like a mobile phone video is able to capture information about objects like size and color, we are developing a similar device to capture small features of a bacterial cell which can help us determine the viability of the cell.

Why did you apply and what will the Discovery Award funding be used for in your work?

The Discovery Awards is one of the most prestigious awards in the field of antimicrobial resistance and an important validation for anyone attempting to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance. This funding is a key milestone which will help us develop our first prototype for clinical sample testing.

What difference will your work make in the long term with regards to antimicrobial diagnostics? 

We aim to make an affordable diagnostic and intend to take a step towards winning the evolutionary war between microbial genes and human wits by early diagnosis of resistant infections as a means towards slowing down the spread of resistance.

Who is on your team?
1. Karan Syal (Phd, Inventor)
2. Dr S. Puspavanam (Institute Chair Prof. – IIT-Madras)
3. Dr Vani Janakiraman (Assistant Prof, IIT-Madras)
4. Vindhya Koppaka (CSO, cAST)
5. Dr Arnab Mukherjee (Assistant Prof, UCSB)
6. Dr Jitendra Kanodia (Associate Director, Theravance Biopharma)

If you are interested in collaborating with this team, please email us.