New Center of Excellence to respond to the challenge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria poses a severe threat to treating infectious diseases. To help address this challenge, Boston Children’s Hospital along with Tulane University have received $25 million in funding from NIAID/NIH to establish a Center of Excellence for Translational Research (CETR) called IMPACT (Immunization against Multidrug-resistant Pathogens: Activating T Cell Immunity).

The IMPACT-CETR, housed at Boston Children’s, will focus on developing preventive strategies against three major bacterial pathogens: Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Klebsiella pneumoniae. These pathogens often exhibit antibiotic resistance and cause significant human morbidity and mortality both in the US and globally.

“The Gram-negative pathogens we are studying frequently have broad-spectrum antibiotic resistance, leaving few or no available drugs for treatment,” said Gregory Priebe, Senior Associate in Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Boston Children’s, who is co-PI of the project and leader of the P. aeruginosa project.

Key personnel and goals

Serving as co-PIs along with Priebe are Richard Malley, Senior Physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s, and Jay Kolls of Tulane. Fan Zhang, Research Associate in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Boston Children’s, will lead the S. aureus project.

Overall goals of the project include defining mechanisms of host protection, focusing on tissue resident memory T cells, and developing nonhuman primate models for scale-up, toxicity, and immunogenicity studies. The teams aim to generate preclinical data to pave the way for subsequent clinical trials.

“We hope to gain a better understanding of how immunity in these bacteria can be harnessed to prevent infections,” said Malley. “The lessons learned from these studies could lead to successful interventions against not only the three targeted pathogens but also other existing or future infectious disease threats.”

“Vaccines can also lessen the prevalence of antibiotic resistance overall by decreasing antibiotic use, thereby diminishing the pressure for the emergence of resistance,” Priebe added.