RIT researcher working to curb the spread of antibiotic resistance with NIH award
RIT Associate Professor Crista Wadsworth received a National Institutes of Health award to advance her research on antibiotic resistance.
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Associate Professor Crista Wadsworth’s research on antibacterial resistance is moving forward with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Antibiotic resistance is a major public health threat. As multidrug-resistant bacteria continue to increase, science is looking for a solution.
Associate Professor Crista Wadsworth from RIT’s Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to survey antibiotic resistance in bacteria, specifically within the genus called Neisseria.
As Wadsworth explained, two important human pathogens within the genus are Neisseria gonorrhea and Neisseria meningitidis.
“Antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea is a huge problem,” said Wadsworth. “The pathogen has evolved resistance to every single drug we have to treat it. It’s a scary pathogen if you’re not able to treat it because it can infect brains, infect the heart, and cause death. There’s no vaccine for gonorrhea, either.”
In her postdoctoral work, Wadsworth learned that gonorrhea in particular gets antibiotic resistance from close relatives that live inside everyone’s mouths. There are about 10 other species of Neisseria that live in mouths that are called commensals and are completely harmless. Because they’re harmless, not a lot of research has been focused on them.
“I found a resistance gene in Neisseria gonorrhea that had been acquired from these commensal species,” said Wadsworth. “My lab is trying to characterize them better. We’re going to sample commensal Neisseria and we are going to test what’s called their minimum inhibitory concentration to different clinically relevant antibiotics.”
The goal is to see if the pathogens have resistance or not. The work will also include sequencing their genomes to try to connect any resistance that is observed to any mutations or genotypes that may be causing the resistance.
A large part of Wadsworth’s work that is a requirement of this NIH award is incorporating undergraduates into the research process.
“One of the additional goals of the grant is to train undergraduates and have them help answer a really important public health question,” said Wadsworth. “It’s a really good system to train students, and I’ve also integrated this research into the classroom. I have a lab full of undergraduates. It’s a huge component of what I do at RIT.”
