Identification and antimicrobial susceptibility test of Arcobacter in agri-foods using a microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" device

近年来，弧菌被认为是一种新兴的食源性和水源性病原体和潜在的人畜共患病病原体。包括弧菌在内的越来越多的耐药病原体被发现从食品传播到人类，并对公众健康造成严重威胁。需要快速检测技术为农业食品系统提供及时的抗菌素耐药性监测数据，以缓解抗生素抗药性危机。对于这个NSERC联盟国际催化剂项目，我们的目标是开发一种微流控设备，用于弧菌的鉴定和抗菌药敏感性测试。将在基于聚合物的微流控装置中开发细菌培养室微阵列，其中将装载显色介质和抗生素。通过显色反应产生的颜色变化，可以直观地显示弧菌的生长情况。将对该设备用于鉴定人工污染鸡肉和牛奶中的弧菌的特异性和敏感性进行评估。然后，将通过在没有观察到颜色变化的情况下抑制细菌生长的最低浓度的抗生素来评估Arcobacter的芯片上的抗菌药敏感性。该设备将有可能减少总分析时间，并简化最终用户的食品样品准备和芯片操作。我们预计，由于芯片实验室平台的小型化，使用这种微流控设备进行检测所用的试剂将比标准微生物参考方法少500倍。该设备在与Arcobacter相关的食品安全管理和诊断中具有广泛应用的潜力，特别是在加拿大和世界各地资源有限的地区。

In the recent years, Arcobacter has been considered as an emerging food- and water-borne pathogen and potential zoonotic agent. An increasing frequency of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, including Arcobacter species, has been identified to transmit from food products to humans and cause severe threat to the public health. Rapid detection techniques are required to provide timely antimicrobial resistance surveillance data for agri-food systems so as to mitigate the antibiotic resistance crisis. For this NSERC Alliance International Catalyst project, we aim to develop a microfluidic device for the identification and antimicrobial susceptibility tests of Arcobacter species. An microarray of bacterial incubation chambers will be developed in a polymer-based microfluidic device where chromogenic medium and antibiotics will be loaded. The growth of Arcobacter will be visualized by the color change due to the chromogenic reactions. The specificity and sensitivity of this device for the identification of Arcobacter in artificially contamianted chicken meat and milk will be evaluated. Then, on-chip antimicrobial susceptibility of Arcobacter will be evaluated by the lowest concentration of antibiotics that can inhibit the bacterial growth with no color change observed. This device will have the potential to reduce the total analysis time as well as simplify food sample preparation and chip operation for the end users. We expect that the detection by this microfluidic device will be achieved by using up to 500 times less of the reagents than with the standard microbiological reference methods due to the miniaturized size of the lab-on-a-chip platform. This device has the potential for wide applications in Arcobacter-associated food safety management and diagnostics especially in the resource-limited regions in Canada and worldwide.