In vivo evolution of antibiotic resistance in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus

• Applicant: Dr. Camilo Barbosa
• Subject Area: Medical Microbiology and Mycology, Hygiene, Molecular Infection Biology ; Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 419853777

The worldwide antimicrobial resistance crisis calls for urgent measures that help mitigate its detrimental impact on modern medicine and public health. Among such measures, it is pivotal to incorporate alternative treatment strategies that include evolutionary principals at their core to extend the lifespan and efficacy of previous and potentially incoming drugs. The latter has largely benefited from the insights obtained in several experimental evolution studies that systematically evaluate the dynamic process through which bacteria evolve resistance under a variety of conditions (i.e. sequential or combination therapy, evolutionary trade-offs or high vs. low drug dose). Despite its contributions, it still remains unclear to what extent experimental evolution can reproduce the in vivo process, and whether it can then be used as a parallel diagnosis tool to evaluate alternative treatment possibilities on site. In that sense, this proposal aims at evaluating two levels of evolutionary predictability: is experimental evolution able to reproduce the in vivo evolutionary process? And if so, can it be used to predict alternative evolutionary outcomes if treatments are systematically modified? To approximate these questions, this proposal considers three main objectives: First, to characterize the determining factors most commonly leading to the in vivo evolution of resistance in a hospital setting. Second, to identify the phenotypic and genomic changes required to evolve resistance in vivo using resistant clinical isolates and third, to evaluate the potential of experimental evolution as a predictive tool for treatment design, using clinical isolates exposed to distinct environments and treatment strategies.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Hosts: Professor Andrew F. Read, Ph.D.; Robert James Woods, Ph.D.