A high-throughput screening assay based on automated microscopy for monitoring antibiotic susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis phenotypes

BACKGROUND: Efficient high-throughput drug screening assays are necessary to enable the discovery of new anti-mycobacterial drugs. The purpose of our work was to develop and validate an assay based on live-cell imaging which can monitor the growth of two distinct phenotypes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and to test their susceptibility to commonly used TB drugs. RESULTS: Both planktonic and cording phenotypes were successfully monitored as fluorescent objects using the live-cell imaging system IncuCyte S3, allowing collection of data describing distinct characteristics of aggregate size and growth. The quantification of changes in total area of aggregates was used to define IC(50) and MIC values of selected TB drugs which revealed that the cording phenotype grew more rapidly and displayed a higher susceptibility to rifampicin. In checkerboard approach, testing pair-wise combinations of sub-inhibitory concentrations of drugs, rifampicin, linezolid and pretomanid demonstrated superior growth inhibition of cording phenotype. CONCLUSIONS: Our results emphasize the efficiency of using automated live-cell imaging and its potential in high-throughput whole-cell screening to evaluate existing and search for novel antimycobacterial drugs. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12866-021-02212-3.