For effective treatment, it is critical to determine a correct diagnosis when an individual is encountering an infection. Various cutting-edge technologies have been designed and used in diagnosis in the last recent years.
Aptamers are short single-stranded DNA or RNA oligonucleotides that bind to a specific target molecule, reproducing antibodies' role while improving the functional effect. Aptamers are obtained via an in vitro chemical process named as systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). The SELEX technology achieved high improvements using magnetic-beads for the aptamer-target molecule selection.

For over half a century, glycopeptide antibiotics have been used as a key weapon in the fight against bacterial infections. Vancomycin is a powerful glycopeptide antibiotic, which can be toxic in high doses to renal and auditive systems, but also at low doses can cause hypersensitivity reactions. Even if microbiological resistance to vancomycin is not commonly developed, clinical treatment failures oftentimes occur with long-term susceptibility for infection remission [1]. In this way, it is critical to measure with as high as possible accuracy the concentration of vancomycin from biological and environmental samples, having the aim to improve the patient compliance to treatment and to overcome the multi-antibiotic resistance issue.
This poster presents our current progress in the selection of a new aptamer through magnetic beads-based SELEX technology that will be further explored for its potential application in the detection of vancomycin in wastewaters.

Acknowledgments:

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CCCDI-UEFISCDI, project number ERANET-RUS-PLUS-PLASMON-ELECTROLIGHT/46/2018, within PNCDI III. GS thanks UMF for the internal grant number 2461/71/17.01.2020. OH thanks to the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2019-0631, within PNCDI III.

References:

[1] K. Hiramatsu, Y. Kayayama, et al., Journal of Global Antimicrobial Resistance, (2014), 2, 213–224.