Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection

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.