Nanodetectors for hospital risk monitoring

Hospitals and healthcare facilities are environments with a peculiar microbial composition, due to the continuous exchange of bacteria between the urban environment and the people frequenting these places, combined with the high use of antimicrobial agents and rigorous cleaning protocols. This results in a mix of common non-pathogenic species, pathogens, and drug resistant bacteria, which are responsible for the nosocomial infections. Due to the current standard diagnostic methods, which are laborious and expensive, combating hospital-acquired infections is challenging. Advances in nanotechnology have led to the development of nanobiosensors, primarily due to their low sample requirements, speedy analysis, onsite detection, and sturdy nature. Among the nanotechnologies, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) present unique optical properties, such as their distinctive plasmonic band, which confers a bright-red colour to AuNPs solutions, and their extremely high extinction coefficient, which makes these nanoparticles detectable by the naked eye. As part of the ANTHEM project, the presented study aims to characterize the hospital’s microbiome and to reduce and monitor the spread of AMR bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes in hospital settings. Based on the microbiome characterization, the long-term aim of the project is to build fast and easy-to-use technological devices based on nanobiomolecular techniques.