Working alongside Professor Melanie Newport, Professor Simon Waddell, Dr Daire Cantillon, and Dr Justyna Wroblewska from Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Dr Ian Cooper - Principal Lecturer in Microbiology in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences – highlights the need to find new strategies to treat a disease that causes more deaths each year than any other bacterial illness.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) is the principal causative agent of TB in humans - responsible for 1.5 million deaths in 2018. However, the related Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) can also cause human TB. Though primarily found in cattle, it can also exist in other animals, including deer, cats, and badgers. Zoonotic organisms can pose a relevant threat to human health, as evidenced most starkly by the spread of COVID-19 to humans.
Dr Cooper's research examines the link between in vitro biofilms and the growth pattern of TB bacteria in the lung lesions associated with the disease. Insights from the study may lead to better treatments for antimicrobial drug tolerant populations of bacilli that can persist through current drug therapies.
"The spread of bovine tuberculosis is a cause for concern for public health, veterinary, and farming personnel,” says Dr Cooper. “The UK government has recently announced plans for a vaccination programme. This dramatically shifts away from many years of culling, and will no doubt lead to interesting developments on the spread of bovine tuberculosis. In terms of human health, antimicrobial resistance is a genuine concern. This paper presents a novel approach to understanding drug tolerance.”
Read Dr Cooper's article in Nature Partner Journals.