Engineering Commons^™

Controlling Biofilm And Persister Cells By Targeting Cell Membranes, Ali Adem Bahar

Dissertations - ALL

The rapid increase in antibiotic resistant infections and the slowing pace of antibiotic development emphasize the need for alternative therapeutic agents to cure infectious diseases especially those caused by multidrug-resistant (MDR) strains. Bacteria obtain resistance to antibiotics through multiple mechanisms. One of intrinsic mechanisms of drug resistance is persister formation, by which bacterial cells enter a metabolically inactive stage and become highly tolerant to essentially all antibiotics, even at the concentrations that are hundreds of times higher than the lethal dose required to kill normal planktonic cells of the same strain. Persister cells in biofilms are even more difficult to …

Controlling Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Persister Cells By Human Granulocyte Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor, Geetika Sanjay Choudhary

Dissertations - ALL

Bacteria are well known to cause chronic infections in humans by entering dormancy and by developing biofilms. These mechanisms allow bacteria to exhibit antibiotic tolerance and relapse to an active virulent state when the antibiotic treatments are discontinued. During bacterial invasions, the host immune cells secrete special signaling proteins, known as cytokines which orchestrate events leading to human immune response and elimination of bacterial pathogens. However, compared to the well documented activities

of cytokines in immune reaction, little is known about the direct effects of cytokines on bacterial cells.

In this study, we focused on granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), …