Our Microscopic World

We all know that air pollution is bad for our environments, and for our health - but did you know that it also changes the behaviour of bacteria? Bacteria play a key role in both health and disease, and so it is important to understand how changes in the air that we breathe might also affect our bacterial friends. This talk will explain the relationship between microbial communities and health, why bacteria aren’t always bad, and why it’s so important to consider the impact of our changing world on a microscopic level.

The human lung harbours a microbial ecosystem known as the microbiome. The ecology of the microbiome is linked with the development, exacerbation, and severity of chronic lung diseases. Bacteriophages (or phages) are viruses that prey on bacteria. These predators are very efficient and highly specific on their targets. Can we use bacteriophages to control and manipulate the ecology of the lung microbiome in patients with lung diseases?

In recent years, the threat of antibiotic resistance has become a reality, causing the deaths of 1.27 million people in 2019. At the same time, researching new antibiotics is at an all-time low - and pharma companies aren't interested. What do we do?
In order to help solve this problem, we step back 100 years into the pre-antibiotic age, when the enemy of our enemy was the only solution we had - the bacteriophages, good viruses that infect and kill bacteria. Using an old method with modern knowledge, we can choose the most powerful viruses, optimise them, and infect the infection, saving lives.