IIT Madras Builds Low-Cost Chip to Slash Antibiotic Testing …

Antibiotic resistance — the “silent pandemic” — caused nearly five million deaths worldwide in 2019. At IIT Madras, researchers are tackling this crisis with a chip that can test bacterial resistance in hours instead of days.

The device, called ε-µD, can determine whether bacteria resist antibiotics in just three to six hours, compared to the 48–72 hours required by conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). That time difference could mean the gap between effective treatment and life-threatening complications.

How the Chip Works

The prototype is about 1.5 cm by 4 cm, built on a glass slide with four carbon electrodes and a soft polymer channel. Patient samples, such as urine, flow into the channel where bacteria attach to the electrodes. After flushing and adding a nutrient medium, bacterial growth begins. 

The system uses Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy to detect changes caused by bacterial metabolites. If the antibiotic kills the bacteria, the signal remains steady. If not, bacterial growth shifts the signal.

Currently, ε-µD tests one antibiotic at a time. The team is working on multiplexing the design to test up to eight antibiotics simultaneously — providing a complete susceptibility profile from a single sample.

Built for Speed and Affordability

Unlike high-end diagnostic tools that rely on costly fabrication or rare materials, ε-µD uses screen-printed carbon electrodes, making it simple and economical. “Most methods still depend on culture tests that take days. This is a completely different way of looking at the problem,” said lead researcher professor S Pushpavanam.

For accuracy, the team spent months fine-tuning the channel size and nutrient concentration to ensure even small bacterial growth rates show clearly. Clinical validation is underway at IIT Madras’ Institute Hospital and Southern Railway Hospital, both of which handle large numbers of urinary tract infection cases.

Cost has been a key factor. The main expense is the potentiostat (sensing equipment), but once installed, tests could cost as little as ₹500 per antibiotic. Multiplexed tests may cost about ₹1,000 — still cheaper and faster than existing methods.

From Lab to Market

To prepare for adoption, researchers are trialing the chip alongside standard tests in pathology labs. Commercialisation efforts are being supported by Kaappon Analytics India Pvt Ltd, a startup incubated at IITM Research Park.

The current prototype is larger than a SIM card, but miniaturisation is part of the roadmap. The team hopes to make it smaller, portable, and capable of running multiple tests at once. “We are looking for partners to help with miniaturising and multiplexing. That’s the next stage,” Prof. Pushpavanam said.

A Timely Innovation

The work, published in Nature Scientific Reports, comes as the World Health Organisation lists antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among the top ten global health threats. In countries like India, where rural populations face rising resistance and limited lab access, a low-cost rapid test could be transformative.

By cutting diagnostic time from days to hours and scaling from one antibiotic to eight, ε-µD could help doctors prescribe the right treatment faster, reducing misuse of broad-spectrum drugs and slowing the advance of AMR.

“The problem of AMR is pressing, and the three-day lag in current testing works against us. We asked: can we reduce it? That clarity of the question helped us find the answer,” said professor Pushpavanam.

(From left to right – Priyadarshini, Diksha, Dr. Richa,Dr.  Pushpavanam, Himanshu and Dr Saranya)

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