Bacteria continuously develops new ways to resist antibiotics, making it an international public health issue.
That’s why the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has partnered with HP to help scientists develop the next generation of life-saving antibiotics, by reinventing HP’s inkjet printer technology. With this initiative, CDC aims to accelerate the testing of new antibiotics designed to fight antimicrobial resistant bacteria.
The innovative BioPrinter pilot programme uses HP technology to dispense, or ‘print’, complex pharmaceutical samples in a few minutes. These are minute volumes of small molecules and biomolecules, ready for immediate testing.
As part of the pilot, CDC will deploy new digital dispenser BioPrinters to four regional labs in the Antibiotic Resistance (AR) Lab Network, to develop antimicrobial susceptibility test methods for new drugs.
New antibiotics for resistant bacteria can help save lives, but hospitals often don’t have access to antimicrobial susceptibility testing to know if a new drug might be effective. But, for the first time, regional labs will be able to conduct rapid susceptibility testing for health departments and hospitals across the US.
“To save lives and protect people, it is vital to make technology accessible to hospital labs nationwide. We hope this pilot will help ensure our newest drugs last longer and put gold-standard lab results in healthcare providers’ hands faster,” says Jean Patel, Science Team Lead, Antibiotic Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit at the CDC.
CDC’s top priority is to test highly resistant bacteria. So, it’s working with HP to develop a larger rollout of inkjet printing technology to labs, nationwide.