BioPAD: Biosensors for Personalised Antimicrobial Dosing

"There is a growing problem of antibiotic resistance. As well as researching new drugs, it is essential that we manage our current drugs effectively to be able to continue to treat infections and enable surgery. There is good evidence that many patients receive the wrong dose, and in any case individuals differ between one another and during the course of an episode of illness. We have developed a relatively painless blood-free method of measuring antibiotics just below the surface of the skin- the microneedle array. These devices can be used to control perfusion pumps or monitor a patient's individual response to antibiotics. The dose of drug can then be tweaked to obtain the most effective and safest dose.

The next step is to develop methods for manufacturing large numbers of the microneedle array. This will speed up testing on healthy humans and ultimately enable incorporation of the sensors into systems for delivering individualised drug treatments in hospitals, clinics and in the community."