Portable device for rapid identification of locally sourced phage for use in phage therapy

Multidrug-resistant organisms (MDRO) are increasingly omnipresent in the healthcare settings of the public and military. Pathogens of interest in particular are those in the ESKAPEE group. As the prevalence of MDRO has increased, the number of new antibiotics to treat these infections has decreased. This has caused the rise of organisms resistant to all known antibiotics. To solve this, bacteriophage have been suggested and used as a treatment route for MDRO. Bacteriophage are highly specific and as a result, isolating them has historically been a months-long, labor intensive, and high-cost process. We propose to revolutionize this process by developing a portable device for phage hunting that removes the labor, time, and expense of the current process. This will be done in four steps: 1) purify the environmental sample; 2) concentrate phage lysate; 3) culture lysate with target bacteria; and 4) purify screened phage lysate. This will be done automatically with no user intervention required except adding and retrieving the sample. The market for this is quite large as rapid, inexpensive phage isolation will allow phage therapy against more MDRO, phage detection of environmental bacteria, and diagnosis of difficult to diagnose, low concentration bacteria. This simple method to screen phage against bacteria will be usable by hospitals, military personnel, and public health professionals to combat MDRO.