- Community response in vivo (CLST/CLPP)
- Tobramycin (TIP)
- SCV susceptibility testing
Patients with cystic fibrosis undergo many treatments throughout the course of an infection. These treatments affect not only the behaviors and genetics of individual organisms, but also those of the larger microbial communities in the same tissues and elsewhere in the same patients. It is important to identify which antibiotics are likely to work for individual pathogens so that physicians can make informed decisions regarding treatment; this type of testing for specific pathogens currently directs most antibiotic treatment choices. However, there are many potentially pathogenic organisms for which most testing methods do not work. In addition, recent research demonstrates that bacteria growing together as a community respond to antibiotics very differently than do the individual species that make up those communities. Recent technological advances allow us to develop better, more comprehensive methods for testing the effects of antibiotics on the entire communities of microbes causing complex, polymicrobial infections, potentially allowing us to identify more effective antibiotic regimens with fewer negative effects. We are working to develop and refine techniques that will more effectively reveal and predict how the microbes in these infections respond to treatment. This work is done with the goal of understanding and improving existing treatment and screening methods used to help patients in the clinic.