Antibiotic resistance already kills more than a million people a year, and public health officials warn the problem will get worse. One strategy to combat resistance is the development of new combinations of existing antibiotics that work together to pack a stronger punch. Video credit: Johns Hopkins University"RoboDrop has tremendous promise as an automated platform for efficiently evaluating antibiotic combinations against drug-resistant bacteria. For example, during testing, RoboDrop discovered a three-drug pairing that fully eliminated the E. coli strain at concentrations against which individual antibiotics had no effect. Because it uses droplets 20,000 times smaller than a teardrop, the platform significantly reduces the amount of sample liquids needed.
