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.On acceptance of her manuscript by the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy:
Brennan-Krohn T, Truelson KA, Smith KP, Kirby JE. Screening for synergistic activity of antimicrobial combinations against carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae using inkjet printer-based technology. J Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 2017 July. Link to abstract. Link to Journal Full Text.
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Please read this informative blog post by clinical microbiology and postdoctoral fellow, Thea Brennan-Krohn: "AST FOR NEW ANTIBIOTICS: THE CLINICAL LABORATORIAN'S DILEMMA."
The manuscript highlights the remarkable activity of apramycin against multidrug-resistant, extensively drug resistant and pandrug-resistant Acinetobacter and Pseudomonas. Both organisms are significant multidrug-resistance threats. Importantly, frank resistance to apramycin was observed in < 2% of isolates. Apramycin is an aminocyclitol-based aminoglycoside that is currently approved for veterinary use. The activity in these groups of bacteria was especially notable in light of the high level of resistance of the same strain set to aminoglycosides (amikacin, gentamicin, tobramycin) approved for human use. This study complements our prior study, also published in DMID, demonstrating activity of apramycin against a high proportion of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae strains.
Our antimicrobial susceptibility testing research is highlighted on Harvard Catalyst Spotlight3/6/2017 See discussion of our work on Microscopy-Based Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing as part of the Harvard Catalyst Reactor Pilot Program.
I was selected as a SLAS 2017 Innovation Award Finalist and will be speaking at the SLAS Annual Meeting with a presentation titled: "Inkjet Printing Technology for Facilitated At Will Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (FAST) in Under 5 Hours: Addressing the Needs of a So-Called 'Post-Antibiotic Era'.
Co-First Authors, KP Smith and Thea Brennan-Krohn, from the Kirby Research Laboratory and Susan Weir from the BIDMC Clinical Microbiology Laboratory collaboratively investigated the ability of commonly used clinical methods to support new "susceptible dose-dependent." MIC breakpoints newly introduced by the Clinical Laboratoryand Standards Institute for the antibiotic cefepime. The idea behind these SDD breakpoints was to offer clinicians the chance to treat otherwise poorly susceptible pathogens by increasing the cefepime dose in a manner tied to the isolate's MIC. To perform the study, we enriched for strains that should have borderline cefepime susceptibility based on a ceftriaxone resistant phenotype. Surprisingly, three commercial methods (Vitek 2, disk diffusion, and a manual microscan panel) performed poorly with only 40-60% categorical agreement with the broth microdilution reference standard. In contrast, the Digital Dispensing Method, (DDM) previously described by our laboratory was stastically equivalent to the reference method, and therefore was the only method capable of supporting susceptible dose dependent therapeutic rescue. The manuscript, "Improved Accuracy of Cefepime Susceptibility Testing for ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae using an On-Demand Digital Dispensing Method" can be found on the Journal of Clinical Microbiology website.
Lucius, Yoon-Suk and I had fun filming this article in our tissue culture area and at the ICCB-Longwood High Throughput Screening Facility. Here is the link: "High Throughput, Real-time, Dual-readout Testing of Intracellular Antimicrobial Activity and Eukaryotic Cell Cytotoxicity." Legionella pneumophila was received an Academy Award for best supporting role.
I am looking forward to giving a podium and poster presentation at the ASM Conference on Antibacterial Development. I will be discussing our efforts to accelerated antimicrobial susceptibility testing diagnostics. More rapid and flexible AST diagnostics are critical for clinical introduction and for directing appropriate use of new antimicrobials under development.
In an article posted online today in Future Microbiology titled "How inkjet printing technology can defeat multidrug-resistant pathogens", postdoctoral fellow, KP Smith, and I discuss the potential uses of inkjet printing digital dispensing technology for addressing the antimicrobial susceptibility testing gap.LRIG stands for laboratory robotics interest group. My talk was titled: "How inkjet printing technology can defeat multidrug-resistant superbugs." In addition to a number of platform presentations, the meeting featured a large exhibit hall with various types of research laboratory automation on display.
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