Currently, three major circumstances threaten the management of bacterial infections: increasing antimicrobial resistance, expansion of chronic biofilm-associated infections, and lack of an appropriate approach to treat them. To date, the development of accelerated drug susceptibility testing of biofilms and of new antibiofouling systems has not been achieved despite the availability of different methodologies. There is a need for easy-to-use methods of testing the antibiotic susceptibility of bacteria that form biofilms and for screening new possible antibiofilm strategies. Herein, we present a microfluidic platform with an integrated interdigitated sensor (BiofilmChip). This new device allows an irreversible and homogeneous attachment of bacterial cells of clinical origin, even directly from clinical specimens, and the biofilms grown can be monitored by confocal microscopy or electrical impedance spectroscopy. The device proved to be suitable to study polymicrobial communities, as well as to measure the effect of antimicrobials on biofilms without introducing disturbances due to manipulation, thus better mimicking real-life clinical situations. Our results demonstrate that BiofilmChip is a straightforward tool for antimicrobial biofilm susceptibility testing that could be easily implemented in routine clinical laboratories.

目前，三种主要情况威胁着细菌感染的管理：抗生素耐药性增加、慢性生物膜相关感染扩大以及缺乏适当的治疗方法。迄今为止，尽管有不同的方法，但生物膜加速药物敏感性测试和新的抗生物污垢系统的开发尚未实现。需要易于使用的方法来测试形成生物膜的细菌的抗生素敏感性并筛选新的可能的抗生物膜策略。在这里，我们提出了一个带有集成叉指传​​感器（BiofilmChip）的微流体平台。这种新装置允许临床来源的细菌细胞（甚至直接来自临床样本）不可逆且均匀地附着，并且可以通过共聚焦显微镜或电阻抗光谱监测生长的生物膜。该设备被证明适合研究多种微生物群落，以及测量抗菌药物对生物膜的影响，而不会因操作而引入干扰，从而更好地模拟现实生活中的临床情况。我们的结果表明，BiofilmChip 是一种用于抗菌生物膜敏感性测试的简单工具，可以在常规临床实验室中轻松实施。