An engineering research team from SFU has won $100000 from Grand Challenges Canada toward the goal of developing an antibiogram add-on for smartphones that will show which antibiotic is appropriate to treat infant diarrhea in developing countries.
The project team announced in 2010 that they had successfully created a prototype microfluidic testing chip, which contains tiny chambers to hold bacteria samples from feces, a food mixture containing an antibiotic, and a dye material that is consumed by the bacteria. The digestion by-product can be used to determine whether the antibiotic is effective. The chips were sent to India for more detailed testing, and the technology will now be used to develop smartphone technology that will immediately transmit results and replace time-consuming lab tests. The funding from Grand Challenges Canada will pay the wages of three graduate students working on the project for a year.
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