Towards personalized medicine in antibiotic treatmentdevelopment of a real-time cell analysis system for biofilm studies

Zusammenfassung

Bacterial and fungal biofilms contribute enormously to the persistence of many life-threatening infections, causing millions of deaths annually. In addition, bacteria and fungi growing as biofilms are up to 1.000 times more resistant to conventional antimicrobial treatments, resulting in a significant economic burden and challenging diagnosis and treatment. Therefore, there is a need to search for new reliable tools to study biofilm formation dynamics to improve treatment strategies. This doctoral thesis aims to set up an impedance-based system to study biofilm formation and dynamics of bacterial (gram-positive and gram-negative) and fungal species, as well as complex multi-species biofilms such as subgingival plaque collected from patients with chronic periodontitis. After the impedance system is set up, the specific objectives of the doctoral thesis are its application as a tool in the identification of effective treatment against persistent biofilms, testing new antimicrobial and anti-biofilm compounds, and the evaluation of novel self-propelled nanoparticles on the eradication of multi-resistant S. aureus biofilms. Finally, a clinical application of the impedance system is proposed, aiming at determining the best individual antibiotic therapy in dental clinics (personalized use of antibiotics).