Taslimarif Saiyed from Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) in India will develop microfluidics-based pH sensors for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) detection. AMR is big healthcare challenge worldwide and particularly in India. Susceptibility assays are vital to study the emergence of new AMR strains in a community or geography, especially during epidemics. The proposed system - Rapid Personalized Antibiotic Susceptibility Assay (r-PASA) - is a DNA-based assay with pH sensors on a microfluidics platform. Microfluidic channels were chosen due to their suitability for rapid bacterial growth, and the reaction mechanism involves the accumulation of organic acids as a function of bacterial growth that changes the pH of the growth medium. Since testing pH at microliter (<5 μl) or nanoliter volumes is challenging, the device includes a DNA sensor based on a mismatched duplex such that acidic pH brings two flourophores' close together for a Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) reaction that can be monitored by fluorescence imaging using a reader integrated into the device. The microfluidic channels use various classes of commonly used antibiotics in different concentrations to ascertain and quantify resistance at the same time.

The study is aimed at developing a novel, low-cost test for pre-term birth (PTB). The proposal is intended to test and validate the low-cost salivary progesterone as a point-of-care (POC) test for detecting risk of PTBs in rural community settings of India. Offering non-invasive sampling of biological fluid that is easy to collect, the study allows validation of saliva from a large cohort of pregnant women residing in low-resource community settings. It is planned to obtain single saliva sample from each participant and determine its predictive characteristics against gestation at delivery and other obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

The proposal attempts to address the lack of a simple, low-cost, prospective biomarker for future short stature or stunting. It aims to validate the use of absolute neutrophil count as a predictor/biomarker for stunting in infants. It has been hypothesized that infants in settings with poor sanitation conditions and associated abnormal inflammation of the gut from infections subsequently have poor absorptions of nutrients and loss of supplements which eventually leads to stunting. Neutrophils are drawn to these sites of microbial colonization or are exhausted during the clearing of microbes from circulation. The study tries to establish the low absolute neutrophil count as a measure of mucosal inflammation and as predictor of linear growth in Indian infants.