News
Consortium students win Young Investigator Awards
Two of the Consortium-funded PhD students have recently won prestigious 'Young Investigator Awards' at recent international meetings.
Josefin Bartholdson (University of Edinburgh) won the Young Investigator Award at The 10th Biennial Meeting of the International Endotoxin and Innate Immunity Society (Edinburgh; 30 Jul - 2 Aug, 2008), for her research characterizing the UDP-glucose dehydrogenase and aminoarabinose transferase from Burkholderia cenocepacia.
Earlier in the year, Jo Fothergill (University of Liverpool) won the Young Investigator Award at the 31st European Cystic Fibrosis Conference (Prague; June 11-14, 2008) for her studies of phenotypic and genotypic variation within Pseudomonas aeruginosa populations during pulmonary exacerbations in CF.
Congratulations to both Josefin and Jo.
31st European Cystic Fibrosis Conference
Several members of the UK CF Microbiology Consortium were at the recent European CF Conference in Prague (June 11-14, 2008) where they presented their recent research findings.
Craig Winstanley (University of Liverpool) presented the genome sequence of the Liverpool Epidemic Strain (LES) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Jo Fothergill, also of the University of Liverpool, described the dramatic fluctuations in phenotypes and genotypes that are observed within the LES during pulmonary exacerbations and IV antibiotic therapy (see "Consortium students win Young Investigator Awards" above), in addition to assessing the Clondiag tube array chip for the identification of LES isolates. Together, these studies make a significant contribution to our understanding of the P. aeruginosa LES strain which is the most common epidemic strain within the UK CF population.
Gisli Einarsson of the Queen's University Belfast presented his studies on the ability of bacterial proteinases to degrade a variety of host defence-related molecules. By degrading these host molecules, such proteinases may disrupt the immune response to infection. His studies focused on proteinases produced by P. aeruginosa, Burkholderia multivorans and B. cenocepacia. Although the majority of host proteins studied were resistant to degradation by bacterial proteinases from these species, SLPI (a host proteinase inhibitor) was vulnerable to degradation, particularly by P. aeruginosa and B. multivorans. The degradation of SLPI may result in aberrant proteolytic activity within the CF lung, thus contributing to lung damage and inflammation.
Chink Identified in Superbug's Armour
The Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) causes life-threatening lung infection in cystic fibrosis patients. These organisms are naturally resistant to most of the major groups of antibiotics, which makes treatment extremely difficult. However, research undertaken by members of the UK CF Microbiology Consortium at the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Western Ontario and University of Manitoba, Canada, has identified an "Achilles' heel" in the Bcc that may ultimately lead to effective antimicrobial treatment.
The discovery focuses on preventing bacteria from forming a sugar-based armour in their cell wall, which enables them to resist killing by a major group of antibiotics. By knocking out certain genes, researchers revealed that the sugar modification was vital to growth and survival of Burkholderia. These findings are unique to Burkholderia, as knocking out similar genes in Salmonella, Pseudomonas and E. coli does not affect bacterial survival. Researchers now hope to further develop this work by finding a way of inhibiting the production of these essential sugar enzymes in Burkholderia using chemical inhibitors.
The research was funded in the UK by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust with a major grant from the Big Lottery, and by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in Canada, by the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
The work was recently published in the Journal of Bacteriology (Abstract) and highlighted in Nature Reviews Microbiology ("Sweet news for CF sufferers?").