Grant: Project Grant - PA: Antimicrobial Resistance (Bridge Grant)

Mycobacterium abscessus (Mab) is an emerging global health threat, causing infections in people with lung inflammations and respiratory disorders. Mab is ubiquitously found in the environment and can spread directly through contaminated water, surgical tools and other shared materials which make it widely implicated in hospital-acquired infections. Mab is intrinsically resistant to many antibiotics and thus, extremely difficult to treat. It uses an arsenal of tools, or virulence factors, to colonize the lungs, including secretion systems, that inject molecules into host cells and cause harmful symptoms, including inflammation and decline in lung function. The detailed mechanisms by which Mab causes these infections, however, are largely unknown. This proposal aims to characterize the role of two newly-discovered secretion systems in Mab that are essential for pathogenesis. By characterizing the structures and roles of these systems, we can identify novel targets for the treatment of mycobacterial infections.