Bacterial infections pose new challenges for medicine. In addition to the marked increase in the antibiotic resistance, it is the growth in so-called biofilms, which lead to chronic courses and make antibiotic treatment significantly more difficult or ineffective. Therefore, it is essential to develop test systems that allow to screen and analyze the biofilms. For now, test systems for four strains of important bacterial and fungal pathogens (Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans, and Candida auris.) have been established.
To identify the potential candidates from natural products, biofilm assays with crystal violet are used for screening of the crude extracts of fungi. If some crude extracts show moderate anti-biofilm activities, the crude extracts are analyzed by HPLC-DAD/MS and purified by prep HPLC and finally identified by HR-MS and NMR techniques. Furthermore, we are also able to test synthetic compounds. For follow-up work, in order to identify the mode-of action, high content assays using multiple organisms and/or confocal microscopy will be employed.
Name of Doctoral Researcher
Zeng, Haoxuan
Name of Supervisor
Marc Stadler
Institute / Department
Microbial Drugs (MWIS), HZI
Contact details
haoxuan.zeng@helmholtz-hzi.de