TY - JOUR
T1 - Safer in Vitro Drug Screening Models for Melioidosis Therapy Development
AU - Amiss, Anna S.
AU - Webb, Jessica R.
AU - Mayo, Mark
AU - Currie, Bart J.
AU - Craik, David J.
AU - Henriques, Sónia Troeira
AU - Lawrence, Nicole
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Melioidosis is a neglected tropical disease caused by the Gram-negative soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Current antibiotic regimens used to treat melioidosis are prolonged and expensive, and often ineffective because of intrinsic and acquired antimicrobial resistance. Efforts to develop new treatments for melioidosis are limited by the risks associated with handling pathogenic B. pseudomallei, which restricts research to facilities with biosafety level three containment. Closely related nonpathogenic Burkholderia can be investigated under less stringent biosafety level two containment, and we hypothesized that they could be used as model organisms for developing therapies that would also be effective against B. pseudomallei. We used microbroth dilution assays to compare drug susceptibility profiles of three B. pseudomallei strains and five nonpathogenic Burkholderia strains. Burkholderia humptydooensis, Burkholderia thailandensis, and Burkholderia territorii had similar susceptibility profiles to pathogenic B. pseudomallei that support their potential as safer in vitro models for developing new melioidosis therapies.
AB - Melioidosis is a neglected tropical disease caused by the Gram-negative soil bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. Current antibiotic regimens used to treat melioidosis are prolonged and expensive, and often ineffective because of intrinsic and acquired antimicrobial resistance. Efforts to develop new treatments for melioidosis are limited by the risks associated with handling pathogenic B. pseudomallei, which restricts research to facilities with biosafety level three containment. Closely related nonpathogenic Burkholderia can be investigated under less stringent biosafety level two containment, and we hypothesized that they could be used as model organisms for developing therapies that would also be effective against B. pseudomallei. We used microbroth dilution assays to compare drug susceptibility profiles of three B. pseudomallei strains and five nonpathogenic Burkholderia strains. Burkholderia humptydooensis, Burkholderia thailandensis, and Burkholderia territorii had similar susceptibility profiles to pathogenic B. pseudomallei that support their potential as safer in vitro models for developing new melioidosis therapies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096347827&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.4269/ajtmh.20-0248
DO - 10.4269/ajtmh.20-0248
M3 - Article
C2 - 32975176
AN - SCOPUS:85096347827
SN - 0002-9637
VL - 103
SP - 1846
EP - 1851
JO - The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
JF - The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
IS - 5
ER -