ITQB NOVA researcher wins €1M CaixaResearch Health Grant
Oeiras, 24 November 2023
A project co-led by ITQB NOVA researcher Mariana G. Pinho has won a CaixaResearch Health grant to develop antimicrobial hybrids for bacterial penetration.
Bacterial antibiotic resistance is becoming one of the greatest challenges for the future of human health. The increase in multi-resistant microorganisms, coupled with the lack of new antibiotics, is predicted to cause the death of ten million people per year by 2050.
One of the main challenges in developing new antibiotics is that many of the available molecules, although promising in their bactericidal capacity, are unable to cross the bacterial membrane. “Some bacteria, known as gram positive, have one membrane, while others, known as gram negative, have a second membrane, the outer membrane, which is a very efficient barrier. Many antibiotics are able to cross the first membrane, but not the second”, explains Mariana G. Pinho, ITQB NOVA Principal Investigator. “This is one of the reasons why it is more difficult to develop new antibiotics against gram-negative bacteria, which are currently the main cause of deaths by antibiotic resistant infections”, she says.
In this project, "ChaoTROPIC Antimicrobial Hybrids for Bacterial Penetration", led by co-PI Mariana G. Pinho and Javier Montenegro, from the University of Santiago de Compostela, two groups with perfect synergy in chemistry and microbiology will join forces to accomplish this high-risk-high gain objective. The researchers will use a new approach to face this challenge, relying on a recently discovered property of boron clusters that allows the transport of hydrophilic molecules across membranes while maintaining their stability and solubility. “Exploring this property will open the door to using boron clusters to transport molecules with antibiotic properties across the two bacterial membranes. This can be a valuable weapon in the fight against multiresistant bacteria”, says Mariana G. Pinho.
Ultimately, the researchers hope to attach boron clusters to well-known antibiotic compounds that are efficient against gram-positive bacteria, but have limited outer membrane penetration, to treat bacterial infections caused by gram-negative bacteria. This research will not only allow the exploitation of a new range of repurposed antibiotics, but also give rise to an entirely new area of research for the fight against bacterial resistance.
Besides ITQB NOVA, other COLife institutes - the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), and Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) - have secured funding to advance research in neuroscience, ageing, and parasitology in this call.
The CaixaResearch Health Research Contest awards are sponsored by "la Caixa" Foundation and the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. €7.9 million have been attributed to the 11 Portuguese projects selected amongs 493 proposals. These projects, that stand to significantly benefit public health, will be developed over the next three years.
