AtbFinder: A New Diagnostic Tool for the Selection of Optimal Antibiotics for Patients with Drug-Resistant Bacterial Infections

Existing methods for antibiotic selection are based on outdated and inaccurate microbiological principles, causing millions of inappropriate antibiotic selections and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, particularly in patients with respiratory infections. These tests take days and fail to select effective antibiotics against multidrug resistant pathogens because they do not account for critical characteristics of “real-life” infections. AtbFinder is a novel rapid culture-based diagnostics test system, employing a novel paradigm of antibiotic selection.  It mimics conditions of antibiotics  interactions  with bacteria within a host by remodeling polymicrobial biofilms from the site of infection in which interbacterial interactions that affect bacterial sensitivity to antibiotics are modulated, and testing antibiotics taken at concentrations that can be achieved in affected tissue or organ. AtbFinder selects antibiotics that treat the bacterial community at the site of infection as a whole and  enables: (i)The selection of antibiotics effective against extensively drug-resistant polymicrobial biofilm challenged infections (ii)The reporting of results in <4 hours, saving over 44 hours compared to conventional methods.

Here, we, for the first time, present findings from a 3 year long clinical study reporting the performance of antibiotic therapy selected based on recommendations of AtbFinder for patients with multidrugresistant bacteria in patients with cystic fibrosis.

Results: Antibiotic optimization aided by the AtbFinder led to: Eradicated drug-resistant P.aeruginosa Infections in 73% of cases; FEV1% increased up to 27%; Decreased the incidence of hospitalizations by 100%; Normalized WBC and CRP inflammatory markers, that correlate with lung injury; Number of systemic antibiotic courses was reduced from 355 to 178.

Conclusion: Antibiotic optimization with AtbFinder results in progressive eradication of P.aeruginosa from airways of patients with CF.

Learning objectives:

1. Selection of antibiotics that treat the bacterial community at the site of infection as a whole is a better option for patients.

2. Mult-idrug resistant bacteria can be treated with antibiotics active against bacteria that support their growth