Technology

Click-chemistry technology

Rather than functionalizing a surface to be able to “catch” a microorganism of interest (ELISA approach), our patented click-chemistry technology makes the microorganism do the job by using their own metabolism to self-functionalize. This phenotypic detection enables to detect live micro-organism (as opposed to genotyping) , and monitor how they react to drugs (p.e. antimicrobial susceptibility tests).

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Assimilation/ Multiplication

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Click Chemistry

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Applications

What?

The C4Diagnostics’ technology allows to rapidly detect and concentrate culturable microorganisms of interest. It is characterised by its high versatility :

  • Almost anything can be anchored to the microorganism of interest: fluorescent probes, nanoparticles, enzymatic probes => can be chosen to fit with the reading method of choice.
  • Specificity is driven by the sugar design: it can be either ultra-specific (pneumophila in particular), semi-specific (some bacteria vs all others) or generic (all microorganisms, including lower eukaryotes).

How?

The process of functionalization consists of assimilating and integrating a “hook” (or probe) to the membrane, using a specifically designed synthetic sugar comprising such hook. Once metabolized, through the natural metabolic pathway of the microorganism, the sugar (and the hook) are transferred to the surface.

This anchoring point then makes it possible, by means of a Click chemistry reaction, to associate conventional tags such as:

– a fluorescent marker or enzymatic probe in order to detect, count and / or identify the microorganisms of interest,

– magnetic beads for the purpose of concentrating / isolating only culturable microorganisms of interest.

Relevant publications

Rapid and Specific Enrichment of Culturable Gram Negative Bacteria Using Non-Lethal Copper-Free Click Chemistry Coupled with Magnetic Beads Separation.

Fugier E, Dumont A, Malleron A, Poquet E, Mas Pons J, Baron A, Vauzeilles B, Dukan S. PLoS One. 2015 Jun 10;10(6):e0127700. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127700. eCollection 2015.