New antibacterial agents against 'Acinetobacter baumannii'

Duration

01/01/2018 - 31/12/2020

Coordinator

Jordi Vila

Funded by

Mineco, Feder, ISCIII

At present a large proportion of available antibiotics are not suitable for the treatment of multiresistant pathogens. Sometimes the possibilities of choice are reduced to a single drug, as is the case of colistin for A. baumannii, in addition the new antibiotics are not active against this microorganism. In a recent document, the WHO positions A.baumannii at the top of the list of multiresistant microorganisms for which further research is required to find new antibacterial agents.

Objective

The main objective of this project is the design of new antibacterial agents against A. baumannii through several approaches:

1. Characterization of the role of active efflux systems (AESs) as well as other outer membrane proteins and double component systems in the virulence and resistance to antibiotics in A. baumannii, in order to search for potential target proteins;

2. Study of the capacity of blocking AESs by cyclic peptides;

3. We have a peptide with good antibacterial activity and its stability is being studied and its activity in vivo is also being investigated using a model of sepsis. The peptide will be optimized by synthesizing its enantiomer.

4. We have synthetized a peptide-oligonucleotide hybrid and in this project we will investigate its bactericidal capacity both in vitro and in vivo.

Total funding

111,300 €