New molecule for preventing hospital-acquired staph infections

A team led by Professor Yves Dufrêne of UCL’s Institute of Life Sciences, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin, has identified a new molecule that can prevent a major problem for hospitals and their patients: hospital-acquired staph infections. The research that led to the discovery was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Certain pathogenic bacteria, such as staphylococcus aureus (also known as ‘golden staph’), cling to indwelling medical devices – catheters, heart valves, grafts, lenses, artificial joints, shunts – and multiply to form biofilms. These multicellular communities cause nosocomial (i.e. hospital-acquired) infections that are particularly difficult to treat owing to their resistance to antibiotics.

Just how big is this problem? Biofilms formed by pathogenic bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus are responsible for more than 65% of illnesses acquired during hospital stays.

An alternative to antibiotics is anti-adhesion treatment: an intervening molecule ‘masks’ the surface protein that ‘glues’ pathogens together, thus preventing their formation into biofilms.

While this idea is not new – cranberry juice has long been a traditional ‘anti-biofilm’ remedy for urinary infections – the researcher’s challenge today is to consistently develop new effective molecules for optimising the prevention of biofilms and treatment of infections.

The molecule discovered by Professor Yves Dufrêne’s team is a synthetic peptide derived from the neuronal molecule β-neurexin. It inactivates a major adhesion protein on the surface of staphylococcus aureus, including its antibiotic-resistant strains.

The discovery owes a debt to live-cell nanoscopy, which was highlighted in 2014 by a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Funded by an ‘Advanced Grant’ from the European Research Council, which celebrated its tenth anniversary on 20 March, the research is an important step in the development of new strategies for fighting staph infections.

 

Publication: www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/16/1616805114.abstract

Published on March 24, 2017