Screening for Bacterial Drug Resistance Using Novel Fluorescent Indicators

SLU ID 17-024 | Fluorescent Probes Of Drug Permeability Barriers In Gram-Negative Pathogens

Background

Multi-drug resistant bacteria rapidly spread in clinics. The major concern are infections caused by Gram-negative pathogens that in addition to class-specific resistance, overproduce multi-drug efflux pumps enabling resistance to a broad range of antimicrobial agents. Gram-negative pathogens vary significantly in the diversity and properties of efflux pumps and new tools are needed to diagnose bacterial strains that overproduce efflux pumps and to establish their specificity.

Overview

Researchers at Saint Louis University have developed compounds that are non-fluorescent in water solution but produce significant fluorescence once inside bacteria to serve as an indicator for the efficiency of efflux pumps in bacterial strains and permeability of bacterial cell envelopes. This technology can function as a molecular fluorescent ruler that measures not only efficiency of efflux pumps in bacterial strains but also reports on the permeability properties of bacterial cell envelopes. In includes a series of compounds that have the same structural core but carry different functional groups that are essentially non-fluorescent in water solution but produce significant fluorescence once inside of bacterial cell. The intensity and rates of fluorescence changes in bacterial strains report on the selectivity of permeability barriers and efflux pump.

Benefits

The potential benefits of this technology include:

• Increasing the ability to measure the efficiency of efflux pumps in bacterial strains

• Increasing the ability to characterized permeability properties of bacterial cell envelopes

Applications

The potential applications of this technology include identifying bacterial resistance.

Opportunity

Saint Louis University is seeking partners to further develop and commercialize this technology.