Author Spotlight: Scalable Drug Screening Protocol for Efficient Discovery of <i>M. abscessus</i> Treatments

Mycobacterium abscessus is highly resistant to antibiotics, only comparable to multi-drug resistant tuberculosis with no approved treatment. Our research focus on developing a scalable drug screening protocol using double reporter strains and I3S technology. This approach aims to enhance testing efficiency, accelerates the discovery of effective, less toxic drugs, and streamline potential treatments for mycobacterium abscessus.

Drug development for M.abscessus infections relies on traditional time-consuming methods like colony forming units, which are labor intensive, low throughput, and prone to human bias. Due to the bacterium's high resistance, fewer hits are found. Thus to find new treatments, high throughput screening of thousands of compounds is essential.

However, traditional methods makes this impractical. Our protocol uses an in-house developed double reporter strain of mycobacterium abscessus, emitting both luminescence and fluorescence. It allows researchers to assess the therapeutic efficacy of a compound without adding any extra reagents or steps, enhancing speed and reproducibility.

Additionally, the I3S Biosciences screening platform employs robotic automation for high-throughput screening assays, handling 105 micro plates without any human intervention, increasing efficacy while reducing error. This protocol enables faster and more reproducible drug screening against mycobacterium abscessus, helping identify new hits. It can reveal key bacterial targets or compounds'functional groups, providing insights into both successful and unsuccessful candidates.

This approach streamlines the drug development pipeline guiding future research and accelerating the identification of potential hits against Mycobacterium abscessus.