A microfluidic system integrating membrane filtration and surface-enhanced raman scattering for rapid antibiotic susceptibility test

The antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) is essential in the clinical diagnosis of serious bacterial infection such as sepsis. However, the whole AST usually takes prolonged time (2-5 days) for bacterial culture, antibiotic treatment and data analysis. To address this problem, we developed a microfluidic system integrating membrane filtration and SERS substrate (MF-SERS) to perform on-chip bacterial enrichment, metabolite collection, and in-situ SERS measurements. By using this system, bacteria and secreted metabolites are enriched in a well-confined microenvironment, which can minimize the required bacteria concentration and enable a rapid, uniform and sensitive AST readout for various infection disease diagnosis applications. © 2019 CBMS-0001.