New approaches antimicrobial resistance detection and treatment

This PhD project will look at new approaches that use engineered proteins as novel detection and treatment methods to tackle the growing treat of microbial resistance to commonly used antibiotics.

You will target beta-lactamase enzymes, which are responsible for resistance to the most commonly used antibiotics, the penicillins. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of the most significant crises in modern healthcare. The most widely utilised class of antibiotics (and therapeutics overall) are the beta-lactams class which includes ampicillin, amoxicillin and methicillin. Thus, their decreased effectiveness is major problem. The main mechanism bacteria use to overcome the action of beta-lactams is the production of beta-lactamases (BL) that breakdown the antibiotic.

The project aims to develop a set of proteins that can bind across a broad set of BLs for the purpose of detection and potential treatment. You will initially focus on engineering a set of proteins called the beta-lactamase inhibitory proteins (BLIPs). You will use BLIPs in two ways: to detect the presence of BLs and to act as a new treatment against BLs action. To detect BLs, the student will take a novel nanotechnology approach in which the BLIPs will be interfaced with sensing nano carbon base materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes: any binding of BLs by BLIPs will change the characteristics of the nano carbon so generating a useful output signal.

For further details of this project, please see our website: https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/research/programmes/project/new-approaches-antimicrobial-resistance-detection-and-treatment