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The Bacterial infections: antimicrobial therapies group is a senior group.
Infectious diseases constitute a tenacious and major public health problem all over the world. The emergence and increasing prevalence of bacterial strains that are resistant to available antibiotics demand the discovery of new therapeutic approaches.
Biofilms are bacterial communities that grow embedded within a protective matrix produced by themselves.
Chronic infections caused by bacteria growing in biofilms, are enormously complicated to treat. It increases their fitness and survival, thus complicating treatment and diagnosis because they persist despite the action of antibiotic therapies and adaptive immune responses.
Over 60% of all human infections are characterized by the formation of a biofilm, which is involved in a wide variety of pathological conditions by either growing over human tissues (Cystic Fibrosis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, chronic wound, etc.) or by developing on the surfaces of medical devices (e.g. endotracheal tubes, intravenous and urinary catheters, etc.).
Our lab aims to investigate new antimicrobial therapies and strategies to combat bacterial infections with different objectives:
- The use of nanomedicine techniques for the development of novel and specific nanoparticles to deliver existing antibiotics or new identify antimicrobial drugs, significantly when the bacteria are growing in biofilm, close to the physiological conditions of the disease and where the current chemotherapy fails;
- The identification and screening of new molecules for the highly selective inhibition of new antibacterial targets (e.g. ribonucleotide reductases);
- The use of nanomedicine techniques for the development of novel and specific nanoparticles to deliver existing antibiotics or new identify antimicrobial drugs, significantly when the bacteria are growing in biofilm, close to the physiological conditions of the disease and where the current chemotherapy fails;
- To study new methodologies to treat chronic bacterial infections in patients suffering cystic fibrosis;
- To develop a new family of antibacterial vaccines;
- The development of new strategies for bacterial coculture systems;
- To study and develop models for wound healing infections and the search of novel treatments;
- The use of lab-on-a-chip technology to deeply elucidate mechanisms to combat bacterial forming biofilm as well as new approaches to identify multiresistant bacteria to different antibiotics.
- To establish the molecular basis for the regulation of genes involved in DNA synthesis (ribonucleotide reductase genes), their importance in virulence and biofilm formation;
We believe these projects will be beneficial to society since we explore the use of different bioengineering approaches to elucidate ways to diagnose and eradicate multi-drug resistant bacteria.
