Antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels. The number of deaths due to this global problem is staggering; only in Europe this figure is expected to surpass 350,000 deaths per year by 2050. To fight this crisis, development of novel Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing (AST) methods is key. This is because conventional AST tools are very slow and require at least 48 hours for bacterial growth and phenotypic susceptibility testing. The ERC PoC project GRAPHFITI intended to make new innovations in AST by making use of ultra-sensitive thin graphene membranes that detect the nanomotion induced by live bacteria. To prove this, we traced the nanomechanical fluctuations of a single-bacterium in the presence of antibiotics with different modes of action and showed that these oscillations diminish in the presence of antibiotics within only 1 hour. Interestingly, when the bacteria were resistant to antibiotic, we did not observe a change in nanomotion, suggesting that graphene can detect the antibiotic resistance of even a single cell. This opens the door to very fast antibiotic testing, which may greatly help doctors in a hospital. Our business and technological studies within the PoC project gave the team strong incentives for launching a start-up to bring it closer to the market. With the significant reduction in size, increase in speed, and great enhancement of the sensitivity offered by graphene, we envision that graphene nanomotion-based antibiotic sensitivity devices can shift current paradigms in diagnostics by providing a faster and much more sensitive method for diagnosis of bacterial infections and fighting antibiotic resistance.
