Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Antibiotics are critical to the treatment of bacterial infections, however our ability to cure these infections is being threatened by the rise of antibiotic resistance. Due to antibiotic resistance, even common bacterial infections are becoming increasingly difficult to treat. Given the lack of new antibiotics being discovered, it is important that we preserve the effectiveness of existing antibiotics to combat resistant bacteria. The emerging phenomenon of antibiotic tolerance acts as a precursor to resistance and poses an additional challenge to antibiotic treatment. Tolerant bacteria are still killed by antibiotics, but at a slower rate. The slower rate of killing means that tolerant bacteria can survive the typical course of antibiotic treatment and cause persistent infections with higher mortality rates. Unlike antibiotic resistance which is identified by routine testing in laboratories, tolerance is not detected because there are currently no tests available to do so. Consequently, the clinical prevalence and significance of tolerance is unknown. I aim to develop a screen to detect tolerance and apply it to libraries of clinical isolates from patients with persistent bloodstream infections. This will provide the first real assessment of how often tolerance contributes to difficult-to-treat infections. We will also identify the mutations responsible for tolerance in these clinical isolates to improve our understanding of the genetic basis of tolerance. Ultimately, this research will improve the diagnosis of persistent infections and provide a foundation for future studies on antibiotic tolerance. Addressing the threat of antibiotic tolerance will help ensure we have the ability to provide effective antibiotic therapy and treat bacterial infections in the future.