The Cartridge

Don’t waste time collecting reagents and lab equipment when running your AST. The Cartridge is a pocket-sized lab bench in a box, containing all your essential tips, buffers, and reagents.

And the best part? ASTar handles all steps of sample preparation for you. Full automation means full automation: – every stage of testing – sample preparation, concentration determination, dilution, and growth medium adaptation – goes on behind the scenes, no manual steps are needed once the patient sample has been loaded into the Cartridge.

The details:

• The Cartridge contains pre-deposited reagents.
• A Frozen insert (containing reagents) is added to the Cartridge before use.
• Generates controlled inoculum for truly accurate AST.
• Contains a unique barcode for identification and linking to the respective AST Disc and patient sample.
• The Cartridge is stored at room temperature. The Frozen insert is stored at -15°C to -25°C.

The AST Disc

If the Cartridge is a lab bench in a box, then the Disc is a miniaturised pharmacy containing all the antimicrobials necessary for on-disc susceptibility testing and sample analysis. This is also where the initial concentration determination happens.

The details:

• The AST Disc has more than 330 culturing chambers. Some pre-filled with antimicrobials in various concentration ranges, as well as chambers for growth controls, and chambers used to determine bacterial concentration for inoculum preparation.
• Contains a unique barcode for identification and linking to the respective Cartridge and patient sample.
• The Disc is stored at room temperature.