BITS Pilani-Hyderabad develops antibiotic finder

BITS Pilani-Hyderabad has developed a new low-cost, ultra-rapid portable device to test antibiotic sensitivity of human urinary pathogens which can help curb antibiotic resistance to a large extent.

The institute Tuesday announced that it is transferring the technology to an incubate company Xcellence in Bio Innovation and Technologies Pvt Ltd (xBITS) for commercial scale production.

An agreement has been signed by V.S Rao, director, BITS Pilani with the representative from of xBITS in the presence of Suman Kapur who is the inventor of this technology, said a statement from BITS Pilani.

Rao said with this initiative of transferring the technology, BITS opened a new chapter in "knowledge economy" and enabled the spirit of entrepreneurship among BITS students and faculty.

Kapur described the technology as "the fastest antibiotic finder available till date". This technology, developed with the funding received from NPMASS-DRDO is expected to obliterate the empirical use of antibiotics and thus help in fighting the growing microbial resistance to antibiotics.

She said the device could be used in a doctor's clinic, lab or hospital-to test antibiotic sensitivity of pathogens found in human biological fluids and tissue scrapings. The novel device which comes with a ready-to-use kit could provide results in a couple of hours as against the normal wait of 2-3 days for a sample to be cultured and tested in any lab.

Anuradha Pal, from xBITS, added that this innovative technology will take the Antibiotic Sensitivity Test (AST) to all people and places in India and other resource constraint settings where facilities for this test are not available.