Life Sciences News

Antonia Sagona has been awarded a prestigious BBSRC Future Leader Fellowship for her project on ‘Engineering synthetic phages against pathogenic E. coli as an innovative tool for phage therapy’.

Antimicrobial resistance is an increasing problem. Antimicrobial-resistant infections currently claim at least 50,000 lives each year across Europe and the US alone, with many hundreds of thousands more dying in other areas of the world. Phage therapy offers an alternative to conventional antibiotics as bacteriophages are naturally occurring viruses that infect and kill bacteria; they have high specificity for their bacterial targets and the side effects are minimal.

Antonia’s project will use state-of-the-art microscopy to understand the mechanisms by which phages infect and kill their bacterial targets. She will also engineer synthetic phages to target a strain of E. coli that is responsible for several serious medical conditions, including neonatal meningitis, sepsis, acute cystitis, and secondary infections in burn patients.
 
Antonia currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Alfonso Jaramillo, and the Fellowship will support her transition towards becoming a fully independent research leader. Further information on the scheme is available at BBSRC Future Leader Fellowship.