Grant: Operating Grant: Antimicrobial Resistance

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a re-emerging superbug and a major human pathogen, causing a wide variety of disease ranging from mild skin and soft tissue infections and food poisoning to life-threatening illnesses. MRSA is one of the top four priority antibiotic-resistant pathogens identified by the Public Health Agency of Canada, and is also considered as an urgent threat by US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. MRSA is more often multiple drug-resistant than its counterpart methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA). It is more difficult to treat MRSA than MSSA. In clinical samples, MRSA is also often mixed with putatively less harmful pathogens, both of which can carry the same drug resistant genes. Therefore, the timely detection of MRSA is crucial for antimicrobial therapy and a key factor to limit the hospital spread of this organism. The conventional methods for the detection of MRSA in clinical microbiology laboratories are time consuming and it usually requires 2-3 days. Currently, there are only 2 US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved commercially available molecular diagnostic assays that can quickly and directly diagnose MRSA within 2-5 hours and have been widely used. Both assays are, however, problematic in that they can produce both false negative and false positive diagnostic results. Therefore, it is critically important to upgrade these point-of-care diagnostic tools. The objective of our proposal is to partner with ELVESYS to develop a new molecular diagnostic assay to circumvent the issues of false positives and false negatives that occur with the currently available commercial assays which are used for rapid and direct detection of MRSA. Our proposal represents a significant improvement to the currently available commercial diagnostic assays. If successful, the results of this study are expected to have a tremendous impact on the health of not only all Canadians