A new technique developed by a University
of Central Florida chemist will help physicians more quickly
identify the bacterial infections patients have so they can be treated
in hours instead of days.
As more bacterial strains resistant to many drugs emerge, it
becomes more critical to quickly identify infections and the
antibiotics that would most effectively treat them. Such quick
identifications become even more important during epidemics because
large numbers of samples would have to be tested at once.
Assistant Professor J. Manuel Perez’s new technique
also promises to give research institutes and pharmaceutical companies
a quicker and cheaper way of developing new antibiotics to combat super
bugs.
The results of Perez’s study were recently published
online in Analytical Chemistry (http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/asap.cgi/ancham/asap/pdf/ac701969u.pdf).
The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
“The method really gives doctors quicker access to
test results so they can treat their patients more quickly,”
Perez said from his lab at the Nanoscience Technology Center at UCF.
“But there are more applications. This method can also be
used by research facilities and big pharmaceutical companies for the
high throughput screening of drugs for antibacterial
activity.”
Perez uses gold nanoparticles coated with a sugar and a
protein that binds to sugars. Meanwhile, a variety of antibiotics are
placed in the same solution. A spectrophotometer reads optical
variations in the gold nanoparticle solution as the sugar and protein
shift , which in turn demonstrate which antibiotics effectively halt
bacteria growth and which ones do not. Results can be obtained within a
couple of hours, in contrast to the traditional methods, which can take
days to complete. And hundreds of samples can be tested at once using
this technique because the amount of bacteria and antibiotic needed is
small.
Pharmaceutical companies can use existing equipment to read
the variations, which means they do not have to buy new equipment.
Perez’s study also shows that the technique is as sensitive
and accurate as the traditional, more time-consuming approach.
“We’re very excited and very pleased with
the results,” Perez said.
Posted 20th February 2008
