By using a computer model to understand the adaptions of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, researchers at ISB have identified a network within Mtb that allows it to tolerate and resist drug therapies. This work is published in Cell Reports.
Tuberculosis (TB) is the world’s second leading infectious disease killer after COVID-19. Drug resistance to TB is a public health crisis. ISB researchers have developed algorithms to predict the efficacy of drugs in treating Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), the causative agent for TB. These research findings were published in the journal Cell Reports Methods.
ISB researchers Dr. Nitin Baliga, Dr. Eliza Peterson and Dr. Vivek Srinivas have developed a new cell sorting technology, called PerSort, that isolates and characterizes dormant persisters that exist in cultures of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis.
ISB researchers have unveiled new insights on how Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, enters and exits a dormant state in human hosts. About a quarter of the world’s population has latent TB, so these important findings will enable and accelerate the discovery of more effective TB drugs.
Researchers at ISB reported a novel method, Path-seq, to profile expression of all MTB genes within infected mice. This study presents the most comprehensive transcriptome profiling of MTB from in vivo infection and a major technical advancement for studying any host-pathogen interaction.
Dr. Eliza Peterson, a senior research scientist who studies tuberculosis (TB) in the Institute for Systems Biology’s Baliga Lab, has been recognized by the University of Washington’s Tuberculosis Research and Training Center with a TB Junior Investigator Award.
NIH Research Matters published an article on our tuberculosis paper. “The incredibly large number of possible drug combinations taken together with the difficulty of growing Mtb in the laboratory make discovery of effective combination therapy extremely challenging,” Dr. Nitin Baliga says. “We hope that our systems-based strategy will accelerate TB drug discovery by helping researchers prioritize combinations that are more likely to be effective.” READ THE ARTICLE
The Baliga Lab and colleagues at Center for Infectious Disease Research published (online in advance of print) this landmark study today in the journal Nature Microbiology: Seattle researchers created a genetic blueprint of the cunning tuberculosis bacteria, then used it to predict and rank potential drug targets 3 Bullets: Researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology and Center for Infectious Disease Research have deciphered how the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis…
3 Bullets: The Institute for Systems Biology and Seattle BioMed have collaborated to reconstruct the gene regulatory network of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Finely tuned gene regulation has allowed Mycobacterium tuberculosis to survive unnoticed in an apparently healthy host for decades; understanding those subtleties is critical for advancing treatment. The identification of co-regulated sets of genes and their regulatory influences offers validated predictions that will help guide future research…
