Anti-Bacterial Antibodies and ELISA Kits for Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing

Combating antimicrobial resistance

To address the spread of antimicrobial resistance in humans, animals and the environment, prudent use of antibiotics will be promoted and efforts will be made to limit therapeutic use. Promote access to affordable, high-quality antimicrobials, vaccines, and diagnostics. Promote the importance of research and development, particularly for priority pathogens identified by the World Health Organization. Establish a new international collaborative R&D center to maximize the impact of existing and new antimicrobial basic and clinical research programs and product development.

Applications

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing and new antibiotics. AST and AMR surveillance are important parts of the development of new antibiotics, as infection prevention and infectious disease practitioners will not generally introduce a new antibiotic into health care until they understand its use. Furthermore, AST data and proposed breakpoints for new antibiotics have to be submitted as part of regulatory approval procedures. Investing in AST during antibiotic development could help reduce the costs of clinical trials. Co-development of new antimicrobials together with specific AST for target microorganisms may help to better position an antibiotic in the clinical market.

The institutional antibiogram. An institutional antibiogram may be integrated in machine learning-based software. Machine learning is used for the development of explicit algorithms with predictive power and is closely related to computational statistics. Within the field of data analytics, machine learning is a method used to design complex models that lend themselves to prediction. Adoption of these models will enable AST researchers to suggest reliable decisions and uncover new insights through learning from historical antibiotic resistance data trends. Such decision-support software programmes may provide guidance for optimal empirical antimicrobial treatment on the basis of available clinical and laboratory information in the electronic patient record and information on local microbial flora and AMR profiles.

The 'smart antibiogram'. Although the institutional antibiogram is a powerful tool, it will never eliminate the need for new and improved AST systems. The current frequency at which these antibiograms are updated may mean that they are not quickly adaptable to rapidly changing or emerging antibiotic resistance mechanisms that occur within a particular health-care institution. If we consider recent and future technological advances in the rapid identification of the causative agent, for example, the use of molecular assays or MALDI-TOF-MS to detect microorganisms directly from positive blood culture bottles, then a more refined system for susceptibility (or resistance) could be generated via a 'smart antibiogram'.