Takara Bio and Resistomap Oy today announce a strategic agreement to deepen their partnership in developing streamlined end-to-end solutions for high throughput antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance from environmental samples.

This collaboration unites Takara Bio’s scalable instrumentation with Resistomap’s environmental AMR intelligence to address the critical One Health mandate to monitor environmental samples to effectively combat the global spread on antibiotic resistance.

“AMR goes beyond the clinic. It moves through water, wastewater, farms, animals, food systems, and the environment. Without environmental surveillance, One Health AMR action is incomplete.” - Windi Muziasari, PhD. Founder and CEO of Resistomap.

If unchecked, AMR is expected to become a leading cause of death by 2050, with an estimated 10 million deaths per year, impacting global GDP by -3.8% with a cost to the global economy of an approximated $5.2 trillion.

In response to these alarming projections, regulations have tightened following the 2024 UN General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AMR, impacting all aspects of AMR, including environmental surveillance. However, monitoring workflows still present numerous challenges, most notably the lack of a standardised workflow, throughput and cost.

The SmartChip Biosecurity Platform

Standardizing high-throughput AMR surveillance requires a streamlined, cost-effective, end-to-end workflow with comprehensive data analysis tools. The SmartChip Biosecurity Platform, a solution combining Takara Bio’s SmartChip ND Real Time PCR System with the Resistomap software, allows users to seamlessly analyse thousands of individual AMR data points in a single 3-hour run, drastically reducing time and increasing throughput compared to classical qPCR protocols.

“The SmartChip ND System is an automated high-throughput qPCR solution, designed to quantify genes with both precision and efficiency. This technology allows to screen hundreds of targets simultaneously, detecting and quantifying antibiotic resistance genes even at low abundance within complex environmental samples” states Dr. Matthieu Lewis, Senior Market Strategy Manager at Takara Bio Europe. “Unlike standard qPCR systems that allow for up to 384 data points per run, the SmartChip ND system can quantify hundreds of samples and assays in parallel, reaching 5,184 data points per run, 13x faster. This allows for users to multiply the number of environmental samples processed at the same time, while targeting a large number of genes of interest.”

The high volume of data generated with the SmartChip System can then be directly analysed with Resistomap’s cloud-based biosecurity platform. “To make the most of the data” adds Dr. Muziasari, “results are explored using our software, a tool designed for AMR surveillance and reporting. The platform includes four interactive views: the Antibiotic Resistance Gene Index (ARGI), the Gene Reduction view, and Comparative Health Risk view, as well as a dedicated Gene details view for more detailed gene-level exploration”.

“The reports generated with the Resistomap Platform can be used to examine results over time, across locations, and at the gene level, with flexible visualisation options for both exploration and reporting. Whether monitoring public health, evaluating treatment processes, or supporting environmental protection efforts, the platform transforms complex qPCR data into meaningful insights.”

Included with the SmartChip Biosecurity Platform are predesigned SmartChip assays that included validated primer sets for comprehensive surveillance. The SmartChip ByDesign AMR 96 Kit contains all assays and controls to target 96 AMR related genes including antibiotic resistance genes, pathogenic bacteria, mobile genetic elements and microbial source tracking markers for comprehensive and streamlined monitoring of environmental AMR. Resistomap and Takara Bio will continue to develop future ByDesign kits for more region-specific or target focused applications.