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，可以帮助实现这样一个时代：通过加速、简化和更便宜的诊断途径，可以更有效地提供医疗保健。抗菌素耐药性（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，抗菌素耐药性每年可能导致全球1000万人死亡，使其比癌症和心脏病加起来更危险。抗生素耐药性是一个多方面的问题，有许多途径可以改善这种情况。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解决这两个挑战，这些技术高度敏感，高度准确，但至关重要的是低成本和高度可制造性，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，低成本试纸和石英基材料。通过利用纳米技术新兴领域（DNA折纸）的发展，该项目将利用附着在传感器表面的精确设计的DNA形状和结构来感知细菌和关键耐药基因的存在，首先在模拟样品中，最后在具有高分析灵敏度和高精度的临床样品中。该项目的研究成果将用于开发下一代医疗设备，这些设备将通过本项目开发的高灵敏度和高精度传感机制来运行。

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.