Research provides a better understanding of how antibiotic resistance arises

Researchers at the Quadram Institute on Norwich Research Park have shown how developing an antibiotic resistance with bacteria could have ‘side effects’ including affecting their ability to cause infection.

Antibiotic resistance remains one of the biggest global health challenges with few new antibiotics and widespread resistance. It is estimated that tens of millions of people die each year due to incurable antibiotic-resistant infections. This new research has the potential to help develop new therapies, as well as give us a better understanding of how to combat, and thus guide current practices to reduce this.

Led by Dr. Mark Webber, the team developed a model using Salmonella to allow a more realistic simulation of how bacteria grow and are exposed to antibiotics in the real world. The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, part of UKRI.

Most bacteria are found in communities called ‘biofilms’. These structures are self-formed by bacterial cells in a community held together by a narrow matrix. In biofilms, bacteria are very difficult to kill, but little is known about how they can change when exposed to antibiotics.

In this work, published today in the journal npj Biofilms and Microbiomes, a model was developed for how bacteria in biofilm respond to antibiotics and results compared to traditional laboratory conditions.

This showed that bacteria in a biofilm can develop antibiotic resistance very quickly but when this happened other properties of the endangered bacteria included the ability to cause infection, or to form a biofilm in the biofilm. first place. They also identified some new antibiotic resistance methods that were subsequently seen in isolated patients. This shows that the model can make a useful prediction of how an antibiotic attack can appear in the real world.

This research paves the way for further studies to understand how antibiotic resistance develops in real-world situations and will help guide the best way to develop conventional antibiotics. use and inform the development of new antibiotics.

I am proud of this work because it has been a great effort and has provided a new perspective on how bacteria adapt and grow in different conditions. We are now able to better model and predict how bacteria react to drugs in the real world “.

Dr. Mark Webber, Quadram Institute

Lead author Dr Eleftheria Trampari said “I hope that this modeling system will be used more widely now and that we understand the impact it has on bacteria from developing stress and use this information. to help manage treatments that reduce risks to human and animal health “.