Heteroresistance investigation of emergent bacterial pathogens in Brazil

• Grant number: 22/05030-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: October 10, 2022
• End date: October 09, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Microbiology - Biology and Physiology of Microorganisms
• Principal Investigator: Cristiano Gallina Moreira
• Grantee: Cristiano Gallina Moreira
• Host Investigator: David S. Weiss
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas (FCFAR). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Emory University, United States

Abstract

Efficient infectious disease treatments still a challenge to human health and welfare due to multiple drug resistance mechanisms, emerging pathogens, and limited availability of new antibiotics. The increase antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to antibiotics, together with the appearance of novel survival mechanisms from the microorganisms represent a continuous threat to human life. Here our proposal brings attention to a growing silent mechanism, the heteroresistant, that may appear during bacterial infection and it is an explanation to failure during antibiotic therapy. Heteroresistance is a form of resistance to a given antibiotic where a subpopulation of resistant cells survives among a large majority of isogenic susceptible ones within that group. The prestigious research group headed by Prof. David Weiss from the Emory University in US is among the top world leaders in microbial resistance and heteroresistance research, and they have explored successful novel forms of antibiotic combo treatments taken in consideration the heteroresistance phenotype of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacterial isolates. Their experience in the area will bring to our scientific group and the São Paulo researcher colleagues excellent future collaborations and novel scientific topics to be better explored in Brazil related to AMR global awareness; moreover, it will associate our recent epidemiological reports with well-established surveillance systems monitoring the occurrence of MDR bacterial isolates in US. We propose here to study AMR and heteroresistance with 2 groups of intriguing Enterobacteriaceae pathogens, such as emergent MDR uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) and iNT (invasive non-typhoidal) Salmonella isolates from Brazil, similar to previous strains described by our group. That will open many other potential research topics to be investigated by our collaborative groups (Emory - UNESP). Herein, we put all these themes in perspective to this study and briefly detail our research proposal. This unique opportunity will start a novel major research topic in infectious disease between Brazilian and American scientists, we look forward to take this great international opportunity under BPE-FAPESP fellowship scheme. (AU)