Charlie Hind

🚨WISC is excited to announce we are changing our name to Women and Inclusion in Supramolecular Chemistry!

➡️ www.womeninsuprachem.com

#WomeninSTEM
#EDI
#SupramolecularChemistry
#ChemSky

Come work with me!!! Opportunity for a Senior Scientist to join our wonderful, friendly and productive team at UKHSA, Porton Down. Working as part of our Phage and Open Innovation Teams. Closing date 10th Dec. #job #microsky Please share with your networks :D www.healthjobsuk.com/job/UK/Londo...

🚨 PhD Opportunity 🚨
Interested in microbiology, phages & water security?
Join me and Prof Cindy Smith to test phages as a sustainable alternative to chlorine in drinking-water biofilters.
Metagenomics, phage discovery & ecology — all in one exciting project!
Apply: www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/mvl...

PhD opportunity in my lab: exploring how commensals and pathogens build biofilm communities on endotracheal (ventilator) tubes. Microbial ecology, medical microbiology and fancy imaging! Co-supervised with the fabulous Saskia Bakker and Jeremy Webb warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa... #MicroSky

How falling vaccination rates are fuelling the antibiotic resistance crisis Measles is a viral infection, so antibiotics don’t treat it directly. But it weakens the immune system, leading to bacterial infections like pneumonia or ear infections, which do require antibiotics.

"Vaccines, in fact, do more than prevent disease. They protect our ability to treat infections by reducing the need for antibiotics and slowing the rise of resistant bacteria."

theconversation.com/how-falling-...

Rapid impedance-based Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (iFAST) of Enterobacterales in urinary tract infections Evidence-based antibiotic prescribing for urinary tract infections (UTIs) would increase treatment success and improve antibiotic stewardship. Current…

It is time to improve diagnostics of Urinary Tract Infections! We developed a new technology that can work out which antibiotic would be best suited to treat UTIs in <five hours rather than the >40 hours that it currently takes.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New Generation Modified Azole Antifungals against Multidrug-Resistant Candida auris - PubMed The rise of antifungal resistance and limited treatment options highlight the urgent need for new drug classes. <i>Candida auris</i> is a serious global health threat with few effective therapies. In ...

A lovely interdisciplinary study on 'New Generation Modified Azole Antifungals against Multidrug-Resistant Candida auris' between @ukhsa.bsky.social, @kingslsm.bsky.social and others @mirazrahman.bsky.social pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40550788/

For all mankind - a scenario where the Russians got to the moon first!

Being a first generation university graduate, the impact on a career in science Being in the first generation to access Higher Education (First Gen) is a barrier to academic success. First Gens face difficulties transitioning into, completing, and attaining competitive grades in ...

New study from the Women in Supramolecular Chemistry (WISC) revealing the unique challenges resulting from being First Gen (first generation of a family to access Higher Education) in science and showing how these persist at every stage of a career in academia:
pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Resistance emerges to newest antibiotic A new study published by UKHSA shows some bacteria have already become resistant to one of the newest antibiotics introduced to the NHS.

A new study published by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that some bacteria have already become resistant to one of the newest #antibiotics introduced to the NHS.

Priority pathogens: UK draws up new disease-threat watch list Some are viruses with global pandemic potential - like Covid - others infectious illnesses with no treatments.

'The UK has a new watch list of 24 infectious diseases that could pose the greatest future threat to public health'

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Text from an article in The Economist: “Public health is the mom of science,” says a laboratory scientist. “She does everything and no one notices until she stops doing it.”

From @economist.com
h/t @katribertram.bsky.social

Joint grant awarded to KCL and our team at UKHSA being celebrated here!

C7-Substituted Quinolines as Potent Inhibitors of AdeG Efflux Pumps in Acinetobacter baumannii Efflux, mediated by a series of multidrug efflux pumps, is a major contributor to antibiotic resistance in Gram-negative bacteria. Efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs), which can block efflux, have the potential to be used as adjuvant therapies to resensitize bacteria to existing antibiotics. In this study, 36 quinoline-based compounds were synthesized as potential EPIs targeting resistance nodulation division (RND) family pumps in the multidrug-resistant pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii. In A. baumannii strains with overexpressed AdeFGH (chloramphenicol-adapted) and AdeABC (AYE, Ab5075-UW), these compounds enhanced Hoechst dye accumulation, indicating general efflux inhibition, and potentiated chloramphenicol, which is an AdeG substrate. The research focused on two generations of quinoline compounds, with modifications at the C-7 position of first-generation compounds to improve hydrophobic interactions with the Phe loop in the AdeG efflux pump, to generate second-generation compounds. The modified quinolines showed strong pump inhibition and significant chloramphenicol potentiation, with MIC reductions of 4- to 64-fold. Notably, compounds 1.8 and 3.8 exhibited the highest inhibitory activity, while compounds 1.3 and 3.3 showed up to 64-fold potentiation, highlighting the importance of specific structural features at the C-7 position for efflux pump inhibition. The study also revealed selective inhibition of AdeFGH over AdeABC, with no potentiation observed for gentamicin, showing the specificity of these quinoline-based inhibitors. Importantly, the compounds showed no toxicity in a Galleria mellonella model at a dose level of 20 mg/kg, highlighting their suitability as potential antibiotic adjuvants for combating bacterial resistance.

pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...
Publication from a previous PhD student (Ivy Zhu) out now! EPIs against adeG in A. baumannii

Dangerous drug-resistant bacteria are spreading in Ukraine War appears to have accelerated the spread of pathogens resistant to antibiotics in the country.

Dangerous drug-resistant bacteria are spreading in Ukraine: Clinics treating war injuries have registered a sharp increase of #AMR cases. More than 80% of all patients admitted to Feofaniya Hospital have infections caused by microbes which are resistant to antibiotics. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

PhD projects at Uni of Surrey, including some with UKHSA!
www.surrey.ac.uk/bbsrc-wessex...

Partnerships | PACE PACE brings the best minds in antimicrobial resistance research and connects them to funding, resources, and the right partnerships.

We've partnered with the PACE accelerator for early stage drug discovery against priority pathogens

paceamr.org.uk/partnerships/

Construction of a drug sensitised Candida auris strain Candida auris is an emerging pathogenic fungus causing outbreaks of invasive disease in healthcare facilities worldwide with the majority of clinical isolates demonstrating intrinsic resistance to mul...

Nice work from Mahnoor and Barry, with the ever present support of our friends at UKHSA - "Construction of a drug sensitised Candida auris strain". Idea is to first find new classes of antifungals and then solve the efflux problem www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...