New, easy to use, low-cost technologies based on DNA origami biosensing to achieve distributed screening for AMR and improved antibiotic prescribing

生物传感技术具有巨大的潜力，可以帮助实现一个时代，在这个时代，由于加速、简化和更便宜的诊断途径，医疗保健可以更有效地提供。抗生素耐药性（AMR）是我们面临的最重大的社会挑战之一，由于其性质，需要全球协调应对。如果不采取行动，到2050年，AMR每年可能导致全球1000万人死亡，使其比癌症和心脏病加起来更危险。AMR是一个多方面的问题，有许多改善情况的途径。两个关键方面是诊断和有针对性的药物处方。该项目将通过开发尖端诊断技术来帮助应对这两项挑战，这些技术高度敏感，高度准确，但成本低，可制造性高，因为设计的传感器将依赖于使用简单，易于采购和高度可制造的组件，如合成DNA，低成本测试条和石英基材料。通过利用纳米技术（DNA折纸）新兴领域的发展，该项目将利用精确设计的DNA形状和结构附着在传感器表面，以高分析灵敏度和高精度首先在模拟样品中，最后在临床样品中检测细菌和关键耐药基因的存在。该项目的研究结果将用于开发下一代医疗设备，这些设备将通过该项目开发的高灵敏度和高精度传感机制进行操作。

Biosensing technologies have great potential to help realise an age where healthcare can be delivered more efficiently due to an accelerated, simplified and less expensive diagnostic pathway. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most significant societal challenges we face and because of its nature requires a coordinated global response. Without action, by 2050, AMR could lead to 10 million deaths globally each year making it more dangerous that cancer and heart disease combined. AMR is a multifaceted problem with many paths to improving the situation. Two key aspects are diagnosis and targeted prescribing of drugs. This project will assist with these two challenges by developing cutting-edge diagnostic technologies which are highly sensitive, highly accurate but crucially low cost and highly manufacturable because the designed sensors will rely on the use of simple, easy to source and highly manufacturable components such as synthetic DNA, low-cost test strips and quartz-based materials. By exploiting developments in an emerging area of nanotechnology (DNA origami) the project will utilise precisely designed DNA shapes and structures attached to sensor surfaces to sense for the presence of bacteria and key drug resistance genes first in simulated and finally in clinical samples with high analytical sensitivity and high precision. The findings of the project will be used to develop the next generation of medical devices which will operate by the high sensitivity and high accuracy sensing mechanisms developed in this project.