김강현 (나노-메디컬 디바이스 공학)

박종민 (미래융합스쿨)

김강현 (나노-메디컬 디바이스 공학)

김재웅 (나노-메디컬 디바이스 공학)

정은서 (융합신소재공학)

박종민 (미래융합스쿨)

​The spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria reduces the effectiveness of conventional antibiotic therapy and poses a serious threat to public health. Broth microdilution and PCR-based methods used to determine antibiotic resistance may be time-consuming. Therefore, new analytical methods capable of rapidly and accurately detecting antibiotic-resistant bacteria are needed.

MALDI-TOF MS enables rapid bacterial identification by comparing characteristic mass spectral patterns with reference databases. In this study, we developed a platform for detecting carbapenem-resistant E. coli by combining the host specificity of bacteriophages with the rapid microbial identification capability of MALDI-TOF MS. Bacteriophages were immobilized onto parylene-coated plates through electrostatic interactions to fabricate phage-immobilized plates suitable for MALDI-TOF MS analysis.

Two bacteriophages targeting carbapenem-resistant E. coli were used to evaluate the performance of the developed platform. Successful phage immobilization on the plate surfaces was confirmed by fluorescence analysis. Target specificity was subsequently evaluated by MALDI-TOF MS analysis using carbapenem-resistant E. coli, carbapenem-susceptible E. coli, and non-target bacterial strains. Finally, the integration of the phage-immobilized parylene-coated plates with a MALDI-TOF MS-based microbial identification system enabled the rapid and quantitative detection of carbapenem-resistant E. coli.