Award details

Developing DNA-based therapies as a new class of treatment for pathogenic bacterial infections

Reference	BBS/E/J/000CA334
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Mervyn Bibb
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	20,632
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	16/06/2008
End date	15/06/2009
Duration	12 months

Abstract

The technology we are developing is a novel way to modify bacterial gene expression in vivo that may lead to the development of powerful therapies to treat infectious diseases. Essentially our approach is to adapt a new class of DNA-based therapeutics - Transcription Factor Decoys (TFDs) - devised originally for treating eukaryotic cells for use against pathogenic bacterial infections, in combination with existing or new antibiotics. The utility of many currently prescribed antibiotics is compromised by the presence of resistance mechanisms in the infectious bacteria, as evidenced by the rise of multi-drug resistant infections in hospitals and increasingly within the community. Our approach is to use TFDs to inactivate these resistance mechanisms by preventing the induction of the genes encoding resistance, many of which are activated in response to antibiotic treatment, and in so doing restore efficacy of the antibiotics. As well as inactivating resistance mechanisms, a parallel approach will be to inhibit growth of pathogenic bacteria by using TFDs to prevent expression of essential genes involved, for example, in the cell cycle or primary metabolism. There are three main project objectives: (1) To demonstrate that TFDs can be used to inactivate antibiotic resistance in a human pathogen (the model used will be vancomycin resistance in Enterococcus faecium). (2) To adapt the approach so TFDs can be deployed to modify gene expression in Gram-negative bacteria such as Escherichia coli. (3) To target genes essential for growth with TFDs to determine whether these are candidates for therapeutic intervention.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Closed Committee - Plant & Microbial Sciences (PMS)
Research Topics	Immunology, Microbiology, Pharmaceuticals, Technology and Methods Development
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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