Isolation & Characterization of bacteriophages for clinical applications

Bacteriophages are viruses with great specificity for infecting their bacterial hosts, allowing their use as targeted antibacterial agents. Phage therapy has received more and more interest nowadays, due to the problem of antimicrobial resistance. Recently, the UK government released a Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee inquiry on the antimicrobial potential of bacteriophages (https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/2970/), indicating the urgency of phage therapy to be established in UK.

In this project, we propose to isolate, characterize and study the mechanisms of action of novel bacteriophages targeting clinical E.coli K1 isolates, with a focus on urinary tract infections (UTIs). We will use phage biology, microbiology, genome sequencing, microscopy and cell biology to achieve this goal.