Financing: Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie  (IWT)

Project reference Nr.: GBOU20160 3E030653
Start: 2002-10-01
End: 2007-02-28

Description:
The acquirement of resistance of pathogenic bacteria to common antibiotics and the development of multidrug resistant strains is raising alarms in healthcare and fueling demand for new antibiotics. Moreover, antibiotics have a borad range effect, killing also the beneficial intestinal microflora. Alternative more sustainable approaches to cope with these infectious bacteria are needed. An alternative way to combat bacterial infetions could be based on the breakthrough discovery that a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria communicate via a common chemical 'language' required to coordinate and regulate the onset of pathogenesis. This bacterial communication is termed quorum sensing. A major goal of this project is to gain insight into the mechanism of quorum sensing since it indefinitely is the clue to a plethora of distinct intriguing phenomena such as bacterial pathogenesis.
 

SMC people involved in the project:

• Bart De Moor (Co-promoter)
• Kathleen Marchal (Coordinator)
• Karen Lemmens (Team member)
• Tim Van den Bulcke (Team member)
• Thomas Dhollander (Team member)
• Kristof Engelen (Team member)
• Pieter Monsieurs (Team member)