St Andrews University scientists have been awarded £2 million by the Wellcome Trust for research aimed at developing therapies to tackle drug-resistant bacteria.
The grant to Professor James Naismith and his team at the university’s biological sciences research centre will fund a seven-year long effort to find new weaknesses in the armour of bacteria that have become or are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
The threat posed by drug-resistant bacteria such as TB, MRSA and C difficile has been identified as one of the major health challenges facing the world.
The award will allow Professor Naismith to continue his work on understanding how bacteria make and transport sugar polymers around.
It is these sugar polymers which prevent the immune system from clearing bacterial infection. Studying these processes should be possible to disrupt them.
Professor Naismith said: “This grant is very ambitious and aims to understand how bacteria achieve a very difficult task. Imagine a glass with three liquid layers, the middle layer is oil that does not mix with the other two water layers.
“Somehow bacteria have proteins that transport sugar polymers from the bottom layer to the top layer, yet somehow they avoid exposing the polymer to the oil layer.”