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Inside the lab with CF researcher Hollie
What’s the background to Hollie’s research?
The results of Hollie’s PhD research will be used to improve a stage of developing a new medicine called pre-clinical testing. This is about taking a promising chemical and turning it into a new medicine ready to be tested in clinical trials.
Lots of in-depth laboratory tests need to be carried out to try and predict what will happen to a possible new medicine when (or if) it is given to people. For each stage of pre-clinical testing, there are lots of slightly different methods researchers use.
A typical day
To find out more about a typical day in the lab for Hollie, watch this video as part of our ‘Inside the lab’ series.
Hollie is conducting a series of studies comparing these different methods. Sharing her results reduces the time other researchers in universities and biopharmaceutical companies will have to spend in the future, making it quicker to test new antibiotics in people with CF who have lung infections.
Below we explain some of the things Hollie is testing in more detail.
One bug or many?
People with CF may be growing lots of different types of bugs in their lungs at the same time. These bugs act differently as a group compared to one type of bug growing on their own.
It’s very difficult to predict how or whether an antibiotic will work when there are lots of different bugs growing in the lungs at the same time, so it’s important to be able to study this in the lab.
Traditionally, lab studies of new antibiotics have been tested where only one CF infection-causing bug is present. Hollie is investigating the effects of antibiotics when more than one bug is grown in the lab.
Breaking through slime!
One way that bugs adjust to living in the lungs of people with CF is by building a protective ‘biofilm’ around themselves. Sometimes described as a protective layer of slime, the biofilm acts as a physical shield against both antibiotics and the body’s natural defence system.
New designs of antibiotics want to be able to get through the biofilm or break it up to be able to kill off the infection. Hollie is developing methods to grow bugs in a biofilm in the lab, making it a more realistic test for whether an antibiotic is likely to be effective when it reaches clinical trials.
Synthetic sputum
CF researchers grow infection-causing bugs in special liquids known as artificial sputum. There are a number of different ‘recipes’ for creating artificial sputum, and PhD student Hollie Leighton is testing out each one. She’s testing how the bugs grow, the effects of antibiotics – and even the effects of DNAse!
Researchers know that bacteria will grow and survive in different ways, depending on where the infection is. Because of this, antimicrobial medicines will work differently, too. To develop a medicine to treat bacteria growing in sputum in the lungs of someone with CF, researchers need to test new medicines in sputum, too.
Her results will be useful for predicting the effectiveness of new medicines in the future.
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