Nanomaterials for real-time bacterial species identification using a hand-held imaging device

耐药传染病的出现对公众健康构成越来越大的威胁。医疗保健获得性感染(HAI)是加拿大的第四大死亡原因，预计到2050年将成为第二大死亡原因。这些感染传播的主要原因之一是诊所、医院、交通枢纽、学校和长期护理设施等易受影响地点的检测和消毒程序不足。为了剔除源自受污染设施的传播所造成的不必要感染，快速识别感染剂对于评估风险和确定适当的隔离和消毒程序至关重要。目前，迅速检测抗药性细菌是不可能的，因为现有技术需要耗时的预培养步骤才能达到可检测的水平。在缺乏快速结果的情况下，风险评估仅依靠经验和判断，而不是诊断数据。为了满足对快速和完全集成的细菌检测和鉴定技术的需求，这一目标的拟议研究将开发和验证能够在物理表面上识别病原体的组件。

The emergence of drug resistant infectious disease is a growing threat to public health. Healthcare acquiredinfections (HAI) are the 4th leading cause of death in Canada and expected to be the 2nd cause of mortality by2050. One of the primary causes of spread of these infections is inadequate detection and disinfectionprocesses at vulnerable sites such as clinics, hospitals, transportation hubs, schools, and long term carefacilities. In order to cull unnecessary infection resulting from transmission originating from contaminatedfacilities, rapid identification of infection agents is critical to assess risk and determine adequate quarantineand disinfection procedures to put into place. At present, the prompt determination of antibiotic resistantbacteria is not possible because existing technologies require a time-consuming pre-culturing step to reachdetectable levels. In the absence of rapid results, risk assessment is conducted solely on experience andjudgment rather than diagnostic data. To address the unmet need for a rapid and fully integrated technologiesfor bacterial detection and identification, the proposed research in this objective will develop and validatecomponents capable of pathogen identification on physical surfaces.