Dr Jamie Wheeler from the Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences has been awarded a Wellcome Early-Career Award to investigate how bacteria respond to varying antibiotic concentrations within biofilms.
Wellcome Early-Career Awards are prestigious five-year awards that support early career researchers to gain skills and experience to lead their own independent research programmes.
Dr Wheeler recently joined the University of Liverpool as a Tenure Track Fellow in the Department of Clinical Infection, Microbiology and Immunology. His work focuses on the globally significant bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which was recently listed as a priority pathogen by the World Health Organization.
P. aeruginosa shows a high degree of resistance to antimicrobial therapies, in part driven by its ability to attach to a variety of surfaces and form biofilm. Biofilms are surface-attached communities of bacteria comprising thousands of individual bacterial cells. These biofilms provide safety-in-numbers for the bacteria and allow them to establish protective structures that can dampen the efficacy of antibiotics. This often leads to the development of long-term infections that are difficult to treat.
Recently Dr Wheeler was part of a research team who found that within developing biofilms, P. aeruginosa cells counter-intuitively move towards, rather than away from, damaging antibiotics. The Wellcome Award will enable him to investigate how and why P. aeruginosa responds to varying antibiotic concentrations, and to understand the implications of this perplexing behaviour for host infection and antibiotic therapy.
Dr Wheeler said: “I am incredibly excited to have been awarded this funding and to be joining the University of Liverpool. Over the next few years, I hope to use this award to establish my own research team, begin new collaborations and provide new insights into P. aeruginosa biofilm formation that will hopefully aid the development of new treatment options for this problematic bacterial pathogen.”
Professor Aras Kadioglu, Head of the Department of Clinical Infection, Microbiology and Immunology (CIMI), added: “I am delighted that Jamie has joined CIMI. His research interests align perfectly with our departmental strengths in respiratory infections, AMR and of course mechanistic understanding of host pathogen interactions. His Wellcome ECA is an exciting project focused on a highly important question in the field of Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenesis, an area where I am sure his novel work will provide valuable new insights. We look forward to working with him.”