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A 3D-printed microfluidic gradient concentration chip for rapid antibiotic-susceptibility testing

Bio-Design and Manufacturing volume 5, pages 210–219 (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

The rise of antibiotic resistance as one of the most serious global public health threats has necessitated the timely clinical diagnosis and precise treatment of deadly bacterial infections. To identify which types and doses of antibiotics remain effective for fighting against multi-drug-resistant pathogens, the development of rapid and accurate antibiotic-susceptibility testing (AST) is of primary importance. Conventional methods for AST in well-plate formats with disk diffusion or broth dilution are both labor-intensive and operationally tedious. The microfluidic chip provides a versatile tool for evaluating bacterial AST and resistant behaviors. In this paper, we develop an operationally simple, 3D-printed microfluidic chip for AST which automatically deploys antibiotic concentration gradients and fluorescence intensity-based reporting to ideally reduce the report time for AST to within 5 h. By harnessing a commercially available, digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing method that offers a rapid, high-precision microfluidic chip-manufacturing capability, we design and realize the accurate generation of on-chip antibiotic concentration gradients based on flow resistance and diffusion mechanisms. We further demonstrate the employment of the microfluidic chip for the AST of E. coli to representative clinical antibiotics of three classes: ampicillin, chloramphenicol, and kanamycin. The determined minimum inhibitory concentration values are comparable to those reported by conventional well-plate methods. Our proposed method demonstrates a promising approach for realizing robust, convenient, and automatable AST of clinical bacterial pathogens.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr. Zhuan Ge at Westlake University for providing the suggestions on simulation of fluidic dynamic. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51908467) and by institutional funds from the Westlake University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental & Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Huilin Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Coastal Environment and Resources of Zhejiang Province, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, 310024, China

    Huilin Zhang, Yuan Yao, Yue Hui, Lu Zhang, Nanjia Zhou & Feng Ju

  3. Institute of Advanced Technology, Westlake Institute for Advanced Study, Hangzhou, 310024, China

    Huilin Zhang, Lu Zhang & Feng Ju

  4. Key Laboratory of 3D Micro/Nano Fabrication and Characterization of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, 310024, China

    Huilin Zhang, Yuan Yao, Yue Hui, Nanjia Zhou & Feng Ju

Authors
  1. Huilin Zhang
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  2. Yuan Yao
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  3. Yue Hui
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  4. Lu Zhang
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  5. Nanjia Zhou
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  6. Feng Ju
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Contributions

FJ, NZ, and HZ conceived the study; HZ designed the project and analyzed the data; YY and YH contributed to methodology and investigation; LZ contributed to the data analysis; HZ and FJ wrote the manuscript; FJ supervised the project. All authors contributed to the proof reading and commenting on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Nanjia Zhou or Feng Ju.

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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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This study does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Zhang, H., Yao, Y., Hui, Y. et al. A 3D-printed microfluidic gradient concentration chip for rapid antibiotic-susceptibility testing. Bio-des. Manuf. 5, 210–219 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-021-00173-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-021-00173-0

Keywords

  • Microfluidics
  • Gradient concentration chip
  • Digital light processing
  • Antibiotic-susceptibility test
  • Bacteria