This $764,423 federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), aims to develop a transformative, rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) system. The key objectives are to: 1) directly isolate and enrich bacteria from whole blood without expansion culture, 2) demonstrate compatibility of the exclusive liquid repellency (ELR) AST method with label-free imaging and...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), will develop a rapid, culture-free system to test antibiotic susceptibility of bacterial pathogens directly from whole blood samples. The $490,093 award to the University of Maryland, College Park will leverage microfluidics and Raman spectroscopy to isolate and identify bacteria, then evaluate their response to antibiotics...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) Project Grant award of $305,000 to Giant Biosystems Inc. aims to develop a rapid point-of-care antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) kit. The proposed microfluidic platform can generate actionable results within 6-9 hours, significantly faster than current methods which require 3-5 days. This will allow physicians to prescribe the most effective antibiotic at the optimal dosage sooner, reducing...
This Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) provides $299,170 to Latde Diagnostics Corp., a woman-owned small business, to demonstrate the feasibility of a rapid, equitable antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) for urinary tract infections (UTIs). The goal of this Phase I project is to develop a Metabolic Amino Acid Phenotyping (MAAP) test kit that can provide...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (CFDA 93.855 - Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research) provides $796,454 to The Johns Hopkins University to develop a rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) platform for Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG). The platform will utilize single-cell mRNA profiling to assess NG susceptibility to multiple antimicrobials within 1 hour, directly from clinical specimens. This will address the critical need...
This $175,000 Project Grant awarded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) aims to develop a decentralized antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance system for resource-limited settings. The project will assess the detection of drug-resistant bacteria and antimicrobial bacteriophages using cost-effective long-read sequencing on Flongle platforms. This research focuses on monitoring...
This $984,381 Cooperative Agreement award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (CFDA 47.084) program supports the development of a rapid, direct-from-specimen diagnostic test for identifying and determining antimicrobial susceptibility of major bloodborne bacterial pathogens, including the "ESKAPE" pathogens. The project aims to expand on a technology first developed during a prior SBIR Phase I award, which utilizes bacteriophage...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $949,997 Project Grant to Iowa State University of Science and Technology under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to investigate the role of environmental factors in the development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in municipal wastewater treatment plants. The five-year research project, starting November 1, 2023, will conduct field, laboratory, and computational studies to determine how susceptible bacterial strains are replaced by...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $305,000 to Resonantia Diagnostics, Inc. to develop a transformative point-of-care diagnostic platform capable of rapidly identifying pathogens and determining their antimicrobial susceptibility. The project aims to achieve three key technical objectives: (1) demonstrating accurate antimicrobial susceptibility testing at very low pathogen loads, (2)...
This Cooperative Agreement award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) program (CFDA 47.084) provides $991,832 to support the development of a novel rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) platform by Astek Diagnostics Inc., a minority-owned small business located in Halethorpe, Maryland. The project aims to adapt a previously developed urine cartridge for use in cerebrospinal fluid and wound effluent specimen types, characterize...
This federal Project Grant award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), provides $569,221 to Iowa State University of Science and Technology to develop a new Antibiotic Susceptibility Test (AST) using Deuterium-Labeling Mass Spectrometry (DLMS). The goal is to rapidly detect antimicrobial resistant (AMR) bacteria, including ESKAPE pathogens, using a bench-top MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer commonly available in clinical labs. The award aims to accelerate the turnaround time for AST from 1-2 days to a few hours, while also exploring the discovery of new AMR metabolite biomarkers. The university will compare the DLMS AST results to the traditional broth dilution method to demonstrate the accuracy and speed of the new approach. An on-agar assay using DLMS will also be developed to further facilitate adoption by clinical laboratories. The award has an original completion date of March 31, 2026.