A team of researchers from Imperial College London working on the Cystic Fibrosis Trust-funded Pseudomonas Strategic Research Centre (SRC), led by Professor Jane Davies, has developed a tool that 'lights up' when it detects the bug in the sputum of people with cystic fibrosis (CF).
The Cystic Fibrosis Trust has part-funded research that provides new understanding of ‘silent changes’ in the cystic fibrosis (CF) gene, which has been publish in PLoS Biology.
Welcome to Research Blast, a new feature that’s bringing you snippets of the ground-breaking research being funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. In this first feature, we explain some of the research underway at the UK Cystic Fibrosis Innovation Hub based at Cambridge University. Find out how War and Peace, Sat Navs and the mission to put a man on Mars figure in the latest CF research!
The build-up of thick, sticky mucus and difficulty in clearing away infections in the lungs are some of the detrimental symptoms of cystic fibrosis (CF). Understanding what’s going wrong in the lung and causing these symptoms may give us clues about how best to treat them. This was the topic of our early Strategic Research Centre (SRC) on innovative alternatives to CFTR (INOVCF) led by Dr Mike Gray at the University of Newcastle. Here we look down the microscope into the lining of the lungs to give you an update on their results.
In this Research Blast, we’re looking at Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterial infection that causes serious lung damage in people with cystic fibrosis. Pseudomonas is the most commonly found bacteria in adults with CF and when it gets settled in the lungs it is difficult to treat. We are funding several research groups to find ways of detecting Pseudomonas as quickly as it appears, prevent it from settling in the lungs and understand how its biofilms are built so that they can be destroyed and antibiotics can do their job.
We know that inflammation is overactive in cystic fibrosis (CF), but we don’t understand what causes it to become overactive or how to reduce it. In this issue of Research Blast, we explain some of the questions that Trust-funded researchers are seeking to answer, from strategies to treat excess inflammation to ways of preventing it from becoming overactive in the first place.
Gene editing is a relatively new biological technique that has the potential to treat everyone with cystic fibrosis (CF) in the future. It works by altering the DNA sequence of the CFTR gene to correct mutations within it. In this issue of Research Blast – your guide with a difference to CF research – we delve into some of the details of this technique.
