Metabolic modeling predicts unique drug targets in .

Lyme disease is often treated using long courses of antibiotics, which can cause side effects for patients and risks the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. Narrow-spectrum antimicrobials would reduce these risks, but their development has been slow because the Lyme disease bacterium, , is difficult to work with in the laboratory. To accelerate the drug discovery pipeline, we developed a computational model of 's metabolism and used it to predict essential enzymatic reactions whose inhibition prevented growth .

Antiphospholipid autoantibodies in Lyme disease arise after scavenging of host phospholipids by Borrelia burgdorferi.

A close association with its vertebrate and tick hosts allows Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, to eliminate many metabolic pathways and instead scavenge key nutrients from the host. A lipid-defined culture medium was developed to demonstrate that exogenous lipids are an essential nutrient of B. burgdorferi, which can accumulate intact phospholipids from its environment to support growth.

Light as a Broad-Spectrum Antimicrobial.

Antimicrobial resistance is a significant and growing concern. To continue to treat even simple infections, there is a pressing need for new alternative and complementary approaches to antimicrobial therapy. One possible addition to the current range of treatments is the use of narrow-wavelength light as an antimicrobial, which has been shown to eliminate a range of common pathogens.

High-throughput Identification of Bacteria Repellent Polymers for Medical Devices.

Medical devices are often associated with hospital-acquired infections, which place enormous strain on patients and the healthcare system as well as contributing to antimicrobial resistance. One possible avenue for the reduction of device-associated infections is the identification of bacteria-repellent polymer coatings for these devices, which would prevent bacterial binding at the initial attachment step. A method for the identification of such repellent polymers, based on the parallel screening of hundreds of polymers using a microarray, is described here.

Fortified interpenetrating polymers - bacteria resistant coatings for medical devices.

Infections arising from contaminated medical devices are a serious global issue, contributing to antibiotic resistance and imposing significant strain on healthcare systems. Since the majority of medical device-associated infections are biofilm related, efforts are being made to generate either bacteria-repellent or antibacterial coatings aimed at preventing bacterial colonisation. Here, we utilise a nanocapsule mediated slow release of a natural antimicrobial to improve the performance of a bacteria repellent polymer coating.

Bacteria repelling poly(methylmethacrylate--dimethylacrylamide) coatings for biomedical devices†Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available: Polymer microarray screening, including analysis of bacterial adhesion by fluorescence microscopy and SEM, and chemical composition of bacteria repelling polymers identified in the screen; polymer synthesis and characterisation; preparation of catheter pieces and solvent studies, and details for confocal imaging/analysis. See DOI: 10.1039/c4tb01129eClick here for additional data file.

Nosocomial infections due to bacteria have serious implications on the health and recovery of patients in a variety of medical scenarios. Since bacterial contamination on medical devices contributes to the majority of nosocomical infections, there is a need for redesigning the surfaces of medical devices, such as catheters and tracheal tubes, to resist the binding of bacteria. In this work, polyurethanes and polyacrylates/acrylamides, which resist binding by the major bacterial pathogens underpinning implant-associated infections, were identified using high-throughput polymer microarrays.