Safer in Vitro Drug Screening Models for Melioidosis Therapy Development

Anna S. Amiss, Jessica R. Webb, Mark Mayo, Bart J. Currie, David J. Craik, Sónia Troeira Henriques, Nicole Lawrence

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1846-1851
    Number of pages6
    JournalThe American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
    Volume103
    Issue number5
    Early online date21 Sep 2020
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Nov 2020

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Safer in Vitro Drug Screening Models for Melioidosis Therapy Development'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this