Measuring antimicrobial effects on biofilm bacteria: from laboratory to field.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the key issues in the development of new assays for biofilms and provides a prototype method for growing and evaluating biofilms in the laboratory. The chapter includes two case studies to demonstrate the application of this methodology for evaluating antimicrobial efficacy of biofilms in (1) the household and (2) in an oil production field. The approach to develop acceptable screening tests is to start with an unbiased and repeatable laboratory protocol and then systematically improving the method to reduce the expense and time and developing a practical method without sacrificing the unbiased and repeatable. The chapter shows repeatability of a prototype laboratory biofilm growth, sampling, and analytical protocol using the rotating disk reactor and demonstrates how the rotating disk reactor (RDR) can be used to simulate various field applications. Because biofilm organisms appear to have greater resistance than their planktonic counterparts, it is believed that new standard analytical methods developed specifically for evaluating antimicrobials against biofilms are an essential need in the effort to control biofilm-related problems.