Multiplex PCR for Predicting Antibiotic Susceptibility (JCM ed.)

<p>Antibiotic susceptibility testing is too slow. Faster identification of microorganisms is now common, as many laboratories use MALDI-TOF or molecular technologies for quick and definitive identification of bacteria. Improvements in susceptibility testing have lagged, as we continue to use tests that take a day for results, and which have not significantly changed in decades. Rapid phenotypic testing has can only be done on limited sample types, using a dedicated platform, and it has not been widely adopted. Tests for rapid genotypic testing usually include only a few genes and require confirmation by phenotypic testing. What are the prospects for fast susceptibility testing?</p> <p>Guests: Dr. Trish Simner. Trish, Associate Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins Medicine, where she is also Director of the Medical Bacteriology and Infectious Disease Sequencing.</p> <p>Dr. Dan Rhoads. Dan is the Section Head of Microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic, where he holds The Belinda Yen-Lieberman, PhD, and James M. Lieberman, MD, Endowed Chair in Clinical Microbiology.</p> <p>Trish and Dan are first and last authors on a paper in press at JCM. The title is “Multicenter Evaluation of the Acuitas AMR Gene Panel for Detection of an Extended Panel of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes among Bacterial Isolates.”</p> <p>Topics of Discussion<br /> • Scope of the AST problem<br /> • Conventional AST – how long does it take?<br /> • General approaches to reducing the time for AST – targeted genotypic (PCR), whole genome sequencing, and faster phenotypic methods. What do you see as potential for each?<br /> • What is the Acuitas AMR Gene Panel and how does it work?<br /> • Study design<br /> • Summary of results<br /> • Discrepant results<br /> • Workflow<br /> • Where do you see this fitting into current laboratory testing</p> <p>Links<br /> • Multicenter Evaluation of the Acuitas AMR Gene Panel for Detection of an Extended Panel of Antimicrobial Resistance Genes among Bacterial Isolates. <a href= "https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1