Fellowship to advance research on drug-resistant hospital infections

Dr Ilias Kounatidis, from the School of Life, Health and Chemical Sciences (LHCS), has been awarded a prestigious fellowship grant from the UK’s national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source. The fellowship includes a £58,000 award from the Diamond Light Source, supported by The Open University, which contributes to funding a 3.5-year PhD studentship for a project titled Decoding Polymicrobial Nosocomial Infections via Synchrotron-Based Multimodal Imaging.

Hospital-acquired infections involving mixed communities of bacteria and fungi are a growing global threat, particularly for vulnerable patients. Some of the most challenging cases arise from co-infections involving Candida fungi together with Mycoplasma or Pseudomonas bacteria, microbes increasingly linked to severe complications and poor clinical outcomes. Despite their impact, scientists still understand little about how these organisms interact with each other or with human cells during infection.

This project aims to address that knowledge gap using cutting-edge imaging technologies available at Diamond Light Source. Through cryo soft X-ray tomography and hard X-ray nanoprobe techniques, researchers will visualise infected cells in three dimensions at nanoscale resolution, revealing structural changes and mapping chemical elements within cells during co-infection.

Complementing this, antimicrobial screening will be conducted in the recently upgraded LHCS microbiology laboratories. Both existing and novel antifungal and antibacterial compounds (including combination therapies) will be tested to identify the most effective treatments against these highly resistant mixed infections. Promising drugs will then be examined further at Diamond Light Source to trace their behaviour and localisation within infected cells.

By combining advanced imaging with rigorous therapeutic testing, this fellowship will provide critical insights into the biology of complex hospital infections and help accelerate the development of more effective, targeted treatments.