I-Corps: MultiRep Biofilm Reactor Customer Discovery

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是加速发现和开发新的抗菌剂，包括药品、消毒剂、预防涂料等。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。他们每年因医院感染造成的医疗成本估计为44亿美元，因食源性疾病造成的成本为70亿美元，以及数十亿美元的农业作物生产损失成本。在工业和国防工业中，微生物引起的生物膜腐蚀估计每年造成数十亿美元的成本。为了减少生物膜的安全和经济负担，需要新的抗生物膜技术。体外抗生物被膜活性的筛选被广泛应用于抗生物被膜剂的发现和开发。开发消毒剂的公司每年在体外筛选方面的相关研发支出约为1.5亿美元，开发抗菌药物的公司每年约为2.7亿美元，开发农用化学品的公司每年约为1.4亿美元。这个i-Corps项目专注于一种新的技术，用于在体外培养高精度的生物膜，与目前最先进的技术相比，产量要高得多。这种新型生物膜反应器可用于生物膜的生长，用于体外抗生物膜活性的筛选。它一次可以生长多达96个生物膜样本，并使用流过装置在生物膜培养物上连续泵送新鲜营养物质，并重新创造许多生物膜在实验室外经历的条件。生物膜反应器包括12个通道，每个通道包含8个孔，这些孔接受生长基质(以5 mm直径的优惠券圆盘的形式)以在其上培养生物膜。可以使用各种相关的生长基质材料来最好地复制相关条件。这种新型生物膜反应器的一个版本是由高质量的可高压灭菌的聚丙烯制成的，并使用一种生物膜形成模式生物--铜绿假单胞菌进行了测试。生物膜反应器能够从样品到样品重复生长出坚固的生物膜。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.