Anaerobic workstation/Station de travail anaérobie

在过去的20年里，细菌对抗生素的耐药性已经成为世界卫生组织、疾病控制中心和加拿大卫生部承认的一个主要问题。造成这种情况的部分原因是，如今的抗生素主要基于有限的化学支架，这使得细菌病原体更容易通过突变或基因转移迅速对新药衍生物产生抗药性。近年来，由于高产毒素菌株的传播，艰难梭菌导致医院相关死亡人数急剧增加，目前几乎没有治疗方案。另一种厌氧病原体产气荚膜梭菌导致严重的人类健康问题(气体坏疽)和加拿大家禽养殖业的重大经济损失。我们的实验室致力于在这两种病原体中发现新的靶点，用于开发对人类或动物细胞没有毒性的药物。伯勒斯的实验室研究细胞内信使分子的产生和降解，这种分子是细菌特有的，对于微生物适应环境条件的变化非常重要。马鲁因的实验室探索了一种名为“抗生物开关”的新型抗生素分子，它针对的是对合成细菌细胞关键成分至关重要的基因的表达。Sirois的实验室正在开发创新的光谱系统，用于在线监测细胞生理，现在将适应厌氧细菌。由于艰难梭菌和产气荚膜梭菌不能在有氧的情况下培养，所以对这两种病原体的所有实验都必须在受控的厌氧气氛中进行。收购将由我们的三个实验室共享的厌氧工作站将使我们能够开发这些项目，帮助我们吸引对新出现的厌氧病原体感兴趣的高质量学生，并培训高素质的人员掌握厌氧微生物的分子方法和程序。

During the past 20 years, bacterial resistance to antibiotics has become a major problem which is recognized by the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Health Canada. This situation is partly because today's antibiotics are mainly based on a limited selection of chemical scaffolds, which makes it easier for bacterial pathogens to quickly develop resistance against new drug derivatives through mutations or gene transfer. The anaerobic pathogen Clostridium difficile has dramatically increased the hospital-associated deaths in recent years due to the spreading of the high toxin-producing strains, leaving currently little therapeutic solutions. Another anaerobic pathogen Clostridium perfringens causes significant human health problems (gas gangrene) and important economic losses for the Canadian poultry industry. Our laboratories aim at discovering new targets in these two pathogens for the development of drugs that would be devoid of toxicity for human or animal cells. Burrus' laboratory studies the production and degradation of intracellular messenger molecules that are unique to bacteria and are important for the adaptation of microorganisms in response to alteration of the environmental conditions. Malouin's laboratory explores a novel class of antibiotic molecules called "antibioswitch" that target the expression of genes important for the synthesis of a key component of the bacterial cell. Sirois's laboratory is developing innovative spectroscopic system for online monitoring of cell physiology that will now be adapted to anaerobic bacteria. Since C. difficile and C. perfringens cannot be cultivated in the presence of oxygen, all experimentation on these two pathogens has to be carried out in a controlled anaerobic atmosphere. The acquisition of the anaerobic workstation that will be shared by our three laboratories will allow us to develop these projects, help us attract quality students interested by emerging anaerobic pathogens and train highly qualified personnel to molecular methods and procedures in anaerobe microbiology.