Towards alleviating the global crisis in antimicrobial resistance – developing a microfluidic device to screen for new biofilm-disrupting agents.

Prof Asterios Gavriilidis (primary)
Chemical Engineering
University College London
Dr Elaine Allan (secondary)
UCL Eastman Dental Institute
University College London

Abstract

Bacterial biofilm-mediated infections are a serious threat to humans, due to their extreme physical resilience and their reduced susceptibility to available antibacterials. Therefore, there is an urgent need to study the properties of biofilms and find new classes of molecules able to disrupt biofilms and treat infection directly or for use as adjunctive agents for existing treatments. This project aims to develop state of the art low-cost microfluidic systems to investigate degradation of clinically challenging bacterial biofilms via a metagenomic library screening approach, in an effort to reduce the impact of biofilm-mediated nosocomial infections.


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BBSRC Area
Genes, development and STEM* approaches to biology
Area of Biology
BiotechnologyMicrobiology
Techniques & Approaches
BiophysicsEngineeringImage ProcessingMicroscopy / ElectrophysiologyMolecular Biology