The project with our partners from Vilnius University Life Sciences Center started in 2017 and is co-funded by European Union through Intelektas program. The goal is to design a phospholipid bilayer membrane-based sensor for detection of biological toxins in the acute bacterial infectious diseases diagnostics. Currently, the available diagnostics tests for the acute disease take it approx. 1-3 days (blood collection, delivery to the laboratory, conducting research and presentation of the results). For this reason, upon the suspicion of the acute illness, general antibiotics tend to be prescribed. However, for some diseases, they are not sufficiently active, destroy the host’s intestinal microflora and microorganisms, causing a risk of the resistance. The same treatment later becomes ineffective.
Our designed sensor is suitable for a fast (approx. 30 min) and an accurate diagnosis, after which Primary Healthcare physicians could provide the appropriate treatment. Compared with other microbiological, genetic testing, immunoassay methods common for detection of acute bacterial infectious disease, the analyzer of bacterial pathogens differs due to simple usage, the shortness of pathogen detection time, portability, lower costs, availability and the minimum needed requirements for consumer qualification as the analysis not to be carried out in the specialized laboratories.