2.8 MILLION
antibiotic-resistant infections per year in the U.S. alone
10 MILLION
annual deaths due to antibiotic resistance globally by 2050
$2.2 BILLION
loss in the U.S. annually due to antibiotic resistance
CRITICAL GLOBAL THREAT:
Antibiotics
Image created by student author,
Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health today as bacteria evolve to develop defense measures such as biofilms against antibacterial drugs. A growing number of infections including pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and salmonellosis are becoming harder to treat as antibiotics become less effective.
Phage Therapy
Bacteriophages bind to protein receptors on bacterial walls and inject their genetic material, leading the host cell to die as phage copies burst through the membrane. However, phages can only bind to the surface receptors of a single strain of species of bacteria, thus causing vulnerability to the development of resistant bacterial mutants.
SOLUTION: LYSEDEVICE
LyseDevice is a rapid, cost-efficient system for on-demand, individualized bacterial infection treatment. Innovations from present technology include utilizing neural networks to generate the protein sequence of lysins to treat the infection, and artificially synthesizing the lysins on-site using loop region modeling and double-domain flow chemistry.
