“Bacteria continuously develop new ways to resist antibiotics—once a drug is approved for use, the countdown begins until resistance emerges. In fact, resistance has even been detected before FDA approval,” said Jean Patel, PhD, D (ABMM), science team lead of the Antibiotic Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit at the CDC. “To save lives and protect people, it is vital to make technology accessible to hospital labs nationwide. We hope this pilot will help ensure our newest drugs last longer and put gold-standard lab results in healthcare providers’ hands faster.”
Antimicrobial resistance is an international public health issue. New antibiotics for resistant bacteria can help save lives, but hospitals often do not have access to antimicrobial susceptibility testing to know if the new drug might be effective. The HP printer helps to speed up testing availability at the local level by “printing” the gold standard test plates in a few minutes. When testing is not available, new drugs can be either over-utilized, contributing to antimicrobial resistance, underutilized, not helping patients in need, or mis-utilized, which can lead to side effects or prolonged treatment.
How it Works
The BioPrinter accurately dispenses or “prints” volumes from picoliters to microliters for faster, more reliable dispensing of small molecules and biomolecules to enable drug discovery, genomics, and proteomics research. The following labs within the AR Lab Network will use this technology to develop and perform antimicrobial susceptibility testing for new drugs: New York, Minnesota, Tennessee and Wisconsin. This new capacity can be used by healthcare providers for patient care while commercial methods commonly used in hospital laboratories are developed and implemented.
Testing through CDC will be implemented in the regional laboratories in the first quarter of FY19. CDC will prioritize testing for highly resistant bacteria, with pan-resistant bacteria being the top priority. HP will coordinate with CDC to evaluate the pilot in the regional laboratories of the AR Regional Lab Network, refine the system, and explore and support a larger roll-out of inkjet printing technology in labs nationwide.