"Bacterial Factors That Predict Relapse after Tuberculosis Therapy" awarded the Charles C. Shepard Science award-Laboratory and Methods
June 26 2019- The paper co-authored by Dr. Shuyi Ma and Dr. David R. Sherman entitled, "Bacterial Factors That Predict Relapse after Tuberculosis Therapy" was nominated and awarded the Charles C. Shepard Science Award for demonstrating their excellence in science by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). To find this paper please visit the publications page above.
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Hernandez and Sherman Labs awarded NIH grant to combat Mycobacterium abscessus
April 2019 – The Hernandez and Sherman Labs have been awarded a $250,000 NIH grant from NIAID with collaborators at the University of Michigan. The two-year grant funds a cross-institution collaborative pilot project that will measure the effectiveness of a panel of drug combinations targeting Mycobacterium abscessus (MABSC), a bacterium related to tuberculosis that causes difficult to treat infections in patients already suffering from other lung diseases. Cure rates for MABSC infections can be 20% or less; and recent evidence suggests that highly drug resistant strains may spread through susceptible populations, such as patients with cystic fibrosis.
The Sherman Lab previously worked with collaborators at the University of Michigan to build a model (INDIGO) for identifying drug combinations active against tuberculosis. The Hernandez and Sherman Lab will adapt the INDIGO model to predict how well novel antibiotic combinations will work against MABSC and then test the effectiveness of these combination therapies in a preclinical model to identify antibiotic regimens that may soon prove useful in the clinic
The Sherman Lab previously worked with collaborators at the University of Michigan to build a model (INDIGO) for identifying drug combinations active against tuberculosis. The Hernandez and Sherman Lab will adapt the INDIGO model to predict how well novel antibiotic combinations will work against MABSC and then test the effectiveness of these combination therapies in a preclinical model to identify antibiotic regimens that may soon prove useful in the clinic
CGIDR Researchers Awarded $17.2 Million Tuberculosis Grant from NIH
The Researchers from the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research (CGIDR) have been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to take a systems-level approach to the critical problem of tuberculosis (TB) infection, specifically focusing on the progression from infection to disease, and variability of treatment. The research ultimately seeks to catalyze new, transformative interventions, such as diagnostics, drugs and vaccines.
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
October 2019 - This pilot project aims to predict synergistic combinations of Cystic Fibrosis lung pathogens, specifically inferring drug interactions inMycobacterium abscessus using chemo-genomics and orthology and develop new tools to improve the design of treatments for M. abscessus and other non-tuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) infections. NTM infections are a progressively increasing problem, particularly for high-risk groups such as patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), AIDS, cancer, or other underlying lung disease or immune deficiency. Notably, it is estimated up to 13% of CF patients screened in the last 5 years had an NTM infection, which contributed in many cases to worsening symptoms. Current therapies to treat NTM infections require taking multiple drugs with toxic side effects for over a year, and treatment success is less than 50%. There is thus an urgent need to develop new drug combinations and new treatment strategies to treat these infections.
Development of novel therapeutics for prevention of antibiotic resistance - DMGF Grant
October 2019 - The overall goals of this project are to use molecular genetics to study mechanisms by which antibiotic resistance develops in bacteria, and to identify small molecule inhibitors of this phenomenon. The role of CID Research will be to help adapt this work to the bacterial pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), including BL-3 operation and bacterial culture, mutant generation and drug susceptibility assays.