Polymeric Antimicrobial Peptide Mimics against Biofilms

课程概述：这个由MRC资助的博士培训伙伴关系(DTP)将尖端分子和分析科学与数据分析中的创新计算方法结合在一起，使学生能够解决假设引导的生物医学研究问题。这是一个为期4年的课程，第一年包括一系列的教学模块和两个基于实验室的研究项目，这些项目导致了跨学科生物医学研究的硕士学位。前两个学期包括精选的教学模块，使学生能够在多学科的科学中获得坚实的基础。学生们还参加了由学术和行业专家主持的一系列大师课程，这些专家涉及分子、细胞和组织动力学、微生物学和传染病、应用生物医学技术以及人工智能和数据科学等领域。在第三学期和暑期，学生们在他们选择的实验室里进行两个为期十一周的研究项目。项目：生物膜被认为是嵌入在聚合物基质中的生理三维微生物群落，它保护细菌群落免受包括抗生素治疗在内的环境的影响。在成为抗菌药物的时代，慢性伤口、溃疡、假体关节或心脏、肺等器官的生物被膜感染日益受到公众的关注，并具有巨大的经济影响。最近，有研究表明，阳离子聚合物(带正电荷的聚合物)模拟抗菌肽是潜在的抗生素开发的新候选者。该项目真正是多学科的，涉及化学、材料科学和微生物学，包括聚合物化学，以合成模拟抗菌肽(AMPs)的多种结构的阳离子聚合物和微生物学，以研究它们对生物被膜的作用模式。该项目将解决基本和应用问题：了解生物膜群落的形成，以及如何使用聚合物来破坏基质，或作为新的活性物质来对抗生物膜群落中的微生物。该项目将满足MRC在化学、材料科学和抗菌素耐药性之间的交界处的跨学科战略技能，以及MRC在处理抗菌剂数据的统计、数据分析和信息学方面的战略量化技能。在物理科学方面，有待开发的主要技术是合成和表征技术，如核磁共振(核磁共振)光谱、凝胶渗透色谱(GPC)、动态光散射(DLS)、透射电子显微镜(TEM)等。在微生物学方面，有待开发的新技术包括生物膜培养，使用代表囊性纤维化患者慢性伤口感染或肺部感染的生物膜模型，成像技术，如共聚焦荧光分析，代表细菌种群的统计实验设计等。

Programme overview:This MRC-funded doctoral training partnership (DTP) brings together cutting-edge molecular and analytical sciences with innovative computational approaches in data analysis to enable students to address hypothesis-led biomedical research questions. This is a 4-year programme whose first year involves a series of taught modules and two laboratory-based research projects that lead to an MSc in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research. The first two terms consist of a selection of taught modules that allow students to gain a solid grounding in multidisciplinary science. Students also attend a series of masterclasses led by academic and industry experts in areas of molecular, cellular and tissue dynamics, microbiology and infection, applied biomedical technologies and artificial intelligence and data science. During the third and summer terms students conduct two eleven-week research projects in labs of their choice. Project:Biofilm are considered a physiological three-dimensional microbial community embedded in a polymeric matrix, which protects the bacterial community against the environment including the antibiotic treatment. In the becoming antimicrobial era, the biofilm infection in chronic wounds, ulcers, prosthetic joints, or in organs as heart or lungs are an increasingly concern for public health and has a huge economic impact. Recently, it has been shown that cationic polymers (polymers with a positive charge) mimicking antimicrobial peptides are potential new candidates in antibiotics development. The project is truly multidisciplinary, involving chemistry, materials science and microbiology, including polymer chemistry, to synthesise multiple architectures of cationic polymers mimicking antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and microbiology to study their mode of action against biofilms. The project will address both fundamental and applied questions: understanding biofilm communities formation and how to use polymers to either destroy the matrix, or as new actives against microorganism living inside the biofilm communities. The project will meet the MRC strategic Interdisciplinary skills at the interface between chemistry, materials science and antimicrobial resistance, and the MRC strategic Quantitative skills in statistics, data analytics and informatics for the treatment of antimicrobial data. In physical science, the main skills to be developed are synthetic and characterisation techniques, e.g. nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, gel permeable chromatography (GPC), dynamic light scattering (DLS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and so on. On the microbiology side, new skills to be developed include biofilm-culture, using biofilm models representative of chronic wound infection or lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients, imaging techniques e.g. confocal fluorescence analysis, statistical design of experiments to represent bacterial populations, etc.