20.109(F10):Sneha Kannan and Max Wu: Antimicrobial drug development

Project Overview

Look at reducing bacterial drug resistance

Potential ideas:


 * Target a pathway other than SOS
 * Use a different bacteriophage

Background information

Research problem/goals

Methods

Predicted outcomes (best case and worst case scenarios)

Resources needed to complete the work

Importance of Project (Application)

Potential future of project

References

Engineered bacteriophage targeting gene networks as adjuvants for antibiotic therapy. Lu, Timothy and Collins, James. PNAS. 2008. This paper proposes a method to reduce bacterial antibiotic resistance. The scientists use bacteriophage to target the SOS gene network (that are non-essential to bacterial survival but tend to be upregulated in order to cause bacterial resistance) but not the networks targeted by the antibiotics. With a combination of both bacterial killing and bacteriophage that enhances the antibiotics, these scientists hope to reduce bacterial resistance and increase bacterial death.