I-Corps: MultiRep Biofilm Reactor Customer Discovery

I-Corps：MultiRep 生物膜反应器客户发现

• 批准号: 1855021
• 负责人: Christine Salomon
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-11-01 至 2019-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1855021&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; MultiRep; Biofilm; Reactor; Customer

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to accelerate the discovery and development of new antimicrobial agents, including pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, preventative coatings, and more. Biofilms have serious economic and safety impacts on healthcare, food, industrial, and defense markets. They are responsible for an estimated $4.4B in annual healthcare costs from hospital acquired infections, $7B in costs from food borne illness, and billions of dollars in costs in lost agricultural crop production. In the industrial and defense industries, microbial induced corrosion from biofilms is estimated to be responsible for billions in costs per year. Novel anti-biofilm technologies are needed to reduce the safety and economic burdens of biofilms. In vitro screening of anti-biofilm activity is widely used in the discovery and development of anti-biofilm agents. Relevant research and development spending on in vitro screening is approximately $150M per year for companies developing disinfectants, $270M per year for companies developing antimicrobial drugs, and $140M per year for companies developing agrochemicals. This I-Corps project is focused on a novel technology for growing highly accurate biofilms in vitro with significantly higher throughput than the current state-of-the-art. This new biofilm reactor can be used to grow biofilms for in vitro screening of anti-biofilm activity. It can grow up to 96 biofilm samples at once, and uses a flow-through setup to continuously pump fresh nutrients over biofilm cultures and recreate the conditions many biofilms experience outside of the lab. The biofilm reactor contains 12 channels, each channel containing 8 wells that accept a growth substrate (in the form of a 5mm diameter coupon disc) to culture the biofilm on. A variety of relevant growth substrate materials can be used to best replicate relevant conditions. A version of this new biofilm reactor has been made out of high-quality, autoclavable polypropylene and tested using Psuedomonas aeruginosa bacteria, a model biofilm forming organism. The biofilm reactor was able to reproducibly grow robust biofilms that were consistent from sample-to-sample.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是加速发现和开发新的抗菌剂，包括药物，消毒剂，预防性涂料等。生物膜对医疗保健、食品、工业和国防市场具有严重的经济和安全影响。他们负责估计每年44亿美元的医院获得性感染医疗费用，70亿美元的食源性疾病费用，以及数十亿美元的农作物生产损失费用。在工业和国防工业中，来自生物膜的微生物引起的腐蚀估计每年造成数十亿美元的成本。需要新的抗生物膜技术来减少生物膜的安全性和经济负担。体外筛选抗生物被膜活性被广泛用于抗生物被膜剂的发现和开发。用于体外筛选的相关研发支出每年约为1.5亿美元，用于开发消毒剂的公司，每年2.7亿美元用于开发抗菌药物的公司，每年1.4亿美元用于开发农用化学品的公司。这个I-Corps项目的重点是一种新的技术，用于在体外生长高度精确的生物膜，其通量明显高于目前最先进的水平。这种新的生物膜反应器可用于生长生物膜，用于体外筛选抗生物膜活性。它可以一次生长多达96个生物膜样品，并使用流通装置在生物膜培养物上连续泵送新鲜营养物质，并在实验室外重现许多生物膜所经历的条件。生物膜反应器包含12个通道，每个通道包含8个威尔斯孔，其接受生长基质（以5 mm直径的试样盘的形式）以在其上培养生物膜。这种新的生物膜反应器的一个版本已经由高质量的，可高压灭菌的聚丙烯制成，并使用铜绿假单胞菌（Psuedomonasaeruginosa）细菌（一种生物膜形成生物体的模型）进行了测试。该生物膜反应器能够可重复地生长出坚固的生物膜，这些生物膜在样品之间是一致的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。