BiofilmChip. Device to treat infections using bacterial biofilms

Eduard Torrents

IBEC, Instituto de Bioingeniería de Cataluña, Spain

The recent global increase in the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the lack of development of new therapeutic agents emphasize the importance of selecting appropriate antimicrobials for the treatment of infections.

Particularly relevant are chronic infections caused by the formation of biofilms, which also present resistance to current antibiotics and represent more than 60% of the infections treated. The antimicrobial susceptibility test, which is applied to guide physicians in the choice of treatment, takes into account only free bacteria populations, so it does not reflect the actual situation in which bacteria grow in biofilms.

BiofilmChip is a new, easy-to-use device that allows the growth of biofilms in vitro, making it easier to evaluate the efficacy of different antibiotics to determine the best therapeutic intervention for a specific patient. It should be noted that BiofilmChip also serves as a high-performance platform for detecting new molecules with anti-biofilm activity. Patients with bacterial biofilm infections are associated with high morbidity and mortality, resulting in high costs to healthcare systems. BiofilmChip will provide individualized treatment for patients infected with biofilm, thus improving their quality of life and, in the long term, reducing the problem of multi-drug resistant bacteria.