Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection

细菌感染继续在全世界造成巨大的人类痛苦和死亡。近年来，结核病等一些"老"疾病的发病率急剧上升，并出现了重要的新感染病例。我们缺乏针对许多细菌性疾病的有效疫苗，并且耐药性细菌病原体在世界范围内的惊人增长继续有增无减。令人惊讶的是，尽管它的重要性，有没有卓越的中心专门专注于细菌感染研究（无论是在英国或海外），有一个普遍关注的短缺，英国训练有素的学者和临床医生发展研究事业的细菌感染生物学。伦敦帝国理工学院的分子微生物学和感染中心（CMMI）由11个独立的研究小组组成，他们都致力于细菌感染的不同方面。在过去的十年中，这些团队为我们在细胞，分子和结构水平上理解细菌毒力的本质做出了重大贡献。这项申请的目的是利用细菌感染生物学方面令人兴奋的最新进展，加强我们目前的研究组合，并扩大我们的兴趣，以解决与我们正在进行的工作互补的重要研究不足的主题。为了实现这一目标，我们希望建立一个MRC支持的分子细菌学和感染中心（CMBI）。帝国理工学院将作出贡献，提供六个新的讲师职位，研究医院中细菌病原体的持久性和抗生素耐药性、宿主免疫机制和在发展中世界引起疾病的细菌菌株等问题。为了提高我们进行前沿研究的能力，我们正在向MRC请求新的设备和支持职位，这将使我们能够研究活组织中的感染和宿主反应过程，并在分子水平上纯化和分析重要的细菌蛋白质。这些研究将使人们更深入地了解细菌致病的过程，并为开发抗菌药物和合理设计的细菌感染疫苗提供新的方法。新中心将与中心外从事细菌性疾病其他方面工作的学术、临床和工业界同事密切合作，我们可以与他们分享专业知识。这一应用程序的一个非常重要的因素是利用我们中心内优秀的研究环境和专业知识，以博士的形式提供基础科学培训。CMBI提供的培训课程将包括四个主要功能：（1）通过“1 + 3年”合并的MRes-PhD课程培训学术细菌感染生物学家;（2）让帝国理工学院六年制本科医学课程的学生能够进行为期三年的细菌感染生物学MD-PhD课程，作为课程的一部分;（3）透过专设的博士培训研究金，为临床合资格的专业人员（专科注册主任级别）提供细菌感染生物学的研究培训。这将为临床学者提供知识和分析技能，使他们能够将基础科学与实用医学相结合，在细菌感染生物学领域进行高质量和临床相关的独立研究。

Bacterial infections continue to cause immense human suffering and mortality throughout the world. The incidence of some 'old' diseases such as tuberculosis has risen dramatically in recent years and important new infections have emerged. We lack efficacious vaccines for many bacterial diseases and the alarming worldwide rise in antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens continues unabated. Surprisingly, despite its importance, there are no centres of excellence focussing exclusively on bacterial infection research (either in the UK or overseas) and there is a widespread concern about the shortage of UK-trained academics and clinicians developing research careers in bacterial infection biology. The Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection (CMMI) at Imperial College London consists of eleven independent research teams all working on different aspects of bacterial infection. Over the last decade these teams have made major contributions to our understanding of the nature of bacterial virulence at the cellular, molecular and structural levels. The purpose of this application is to take advantage of exciting recent progress in bacterial infection biology to strengthen our current research portfolio and expand our interests to tackle important under-researched subjects that are complementary to our ongoing work. To achieve this, we wish to create an MRC-supported Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection (CMBI). Imperial College will contribute by making available six new lectureship posts to study issues such as persistence and antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens in hospitals, host immune mechanisms and bacterial strains that cause disease in the developing world. To increase our ability to do leading edge research we are requesting new equipment and support posts from the MRC that will enable us to study the processes of infection and host responses in living tissues, and to purify and analyze important bacterial proteins at the molecular level. These studies will bring a deeper understanding of the processes that underlie bacterial pathogenesis and will suggest new approaches to develop anti-bacterial drugs and rationally designed vaccines against bacterial infections. The new Centre will have strong collaborations with academic, clinical and industrial colleagues outside the Centre who work on other aspects of bacterial disease, and with whom we can share expertise. A very important element of this application is to take advantage of the excellent research environment and expertise within our Centre to provide basic science training in the form of PhDs. The training programmes offered by the CMBI will cover four major functions: (1) The training of academic bacterial infection biologists through a "1+3 year" combined MRes-PhD programme; (2) To enable students on the Imperial College six-year undergraduate medical course to undertake a 3 year MD-PhD in bacterial infection biology as part of their course; (3) To provide clinically qualified professionals (at specialty registrar level) with research training in bacterial infection biology through dedicated PhD training fellowships. This will provide clinical academics with the knowledge and analytical skills that will enable them to integrate basic science with practical medicine to pursue high quality and clinically relevant independent research in the field of bacterial infection biology.