Published: February 26, 2019 | By Alexis Bullock
Mina Sadeghi, an undergraduate student in the Honours Biology & Pharmacology program at McMaster University, was a MIRA undergraduate summer research fellow (supervised by Dr. Dawn Bowdish). Mina delivered a talk on the work she completed over the summer entitled:
“The use of airway bacterial isolates to inhibit the growth of respiratory pathogens”
Following, Mina summarized the take home points of her talk…
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The aging lungs are known to be highly susceptible to airborne pathogens because they are in a constant state of inflammation, a concept called inflamm-aging.
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Antibiotics are commonly used to treat these life-threatening bacterial infections for the aging population, but antibiotic resistance is a huge threat to our communities and we need alternative treatments to combat infections.
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Commensal (or “good” bacteria) have been studied in depth in the gut, which is a huge host to bacterial cells in our bodies, but recent evidence has shown that the lungs are another important home for bacteria, and the homeostasis of this community is important to prevent disease development and progression.
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Mina’s work was seeking to understand if airway bacterial isolates from healthy people can be used to block the growth of respiratory pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
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Models of the lungs are quite complex and in high demand, and the Bowdish lab has been experimenting with the use of a lung slice model to try and capture all the diverse cell types and factors within the lungs.
Please feel free to contact Mina (sadegm@mcmaster.ca) if you have any questions about her research or would like to discuss future work.
This blog post was first published by the MIRA Trainee Network. Read the ​original article.​​​
