Last week I went to an interesting event hosted by Northeastern’s College of Engineering that opened my eyes a little wider to the problem of biofilms. These are colonies of bacterial cells that stick to all kinds of surfaces–from the bones in your spinal cord to paper towels in a trash can. It wasn’t until the ...
Persistence — it’s what keeps us all surviving. If it weren’t for this lovely quality, we’d just give up and crawl under a rock somewhere because it’s all just so darn difficult out there in the world. Same’s true for every bacterial infection we know of, the chronic ones in particular. Persistence is paramount. Think ...
Sepsis is a whole-body inflammatory response to an overwhelming infection by bacteria or other microogransim. At first glance, it may not seem like a big enough issue to dedicate a whole day toward. But consider the following and then decide: Every 3-4 seconds, someone dies of sepsis. 70% of all infant deaths worldwide are due ...
In the last fifty years, pharmaceutical companies have spent tens of billions of dollars trying to find new classes of antibiotic drugs. Only one has made it into clinical practice. Seem surprising to you? Yeah, me too. At the same time, antibacterial resistance has been rising, meaning the pathogens that infect us are getting better ...
Anthony D’Onofrio studies dirt…or the bacteria that grow on dirt, to be more specific. He is a post-doctoral researcher in the Antimicrobial Discovery Center led by Professor Kim Lewis in the biology department and has started a non-profit educational organization, along with Professor Lewis, called Sample America to help him with a somewhat impossible task: ...