Vancomycin is an important glycopeptide antibiotic which is used to treat serious infections caused by Gram-positive bacteria. However, during the last years, a tremendous rise in vancomycin resistances, especially among Enterococci, was reported, making fast diagnostic methods inevitable. In this contribution, we apply Raman spectroscopy to systematically characterize vancomycin-enterococci interactions over a time span of 90 min using a sensitive Enterococcus faecalis strain and two different vancomycin concentrations above the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC). Successful action of the drug on the pathogen could be observed already after 30 min of interaction time. Characteristic spectral changes are visualized with the help of multivariate statistical analysis (linear discriminant analysis and partial least squares regressions). Those changes were employed to train a statistical model to predict vancomycin treatment based on the Raman spectra. The robustness of the model was tested using data recorded by an independent operator. Classification accuracies of >90 % were obtained for vancomycin concentrations in the lower range of a typical trough serum concentration recommended for most patients during appropriate vancomycin therapy. Characterization of drug-pathogen interactions by means of label-free spectroscopic methods, such as Raman spectroscopy, can provide the knowledge base for innovative and fast susceptibility tests which could speed up microbiological analysis as well as finding applications in novel antibiotic screenings assays. Graphical Abstract E. faecalis is incubated with vancomycin and characterized by means of Raman spectroscopy after different time points. Characteristic spectral changes reveal efficient vancomycin-enterococci-interaction.
Keywords: Bacteria-antibiotic interaction; Enterococcus faecalis; Raman spectroscopy; Vancomycin.