The Microfluidic Microwell Device Integrating Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering for Bacteria Enrichment and in Situ Antibiotic Susceptibility Test

To ensure appropriate antibiotics treatment, antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) is a common method in clinical therapies for selecting proper antibiotic treatment and preventing misuse or overuse of antibiotics. However, the existing method still undergoes several obstacles, such as time-consuming, label-intensive process and lack of accuracy. Here, we develop a microfluidics platform integrating microwell with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technology for low concentration bacteria encapsulation followed by in situ AST. The microwell can greatly increase the effective bacteria concentration and SERS technology can enable a rapidly and highly specific molecular detection from bacteria-secreted metabolites. Combing above features, the microwell-SERS platform can achieve label-free, low concentration (103 CFU/mL) bacteria detection and has the potential to provide AST reference in clinical diagnosis. © 2020 IEEE.