A UAMS research team has been awarded $3.6 million to examine the knowledge gap in bacterial resistance to cefiderocol, an antibiotic used to treat complicated infections.
En Huang, an associate professor at UAMS, will lead an interdisciplinary research team to conduct the project. The research team includes microbiologists Sun Hee Moon and Lu Huang, bioinformatician Se-Ran Jun and clinicians Dr. Mitchell Jenkins and Dr. Ryan Dare.
Cefiderocol is an antibiotic designed to treat urinary tract infections, hospital-acquired bacterial pneumonia and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia as well as other infections caused by multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria. It is administered intravenously.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Health is funding the research. The study launched in September and will continue until August 2029.
The goal of the study is to understand if some bacteria are already resistant to cefiderocol, even if they haven’t been treated with it before, Huang said in a press release. He also said the team will research how bacteria develop resistance to cefiderocol after being exposed to the antibiotic.
“Without a deeper understanding of how resistance develops, we cannot create effective strategies to combat these resistant bacteria,” Huang said in the release. “Resistance to the antibiotic limits doctors’ options to effectively treat the various infections.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nearly 3 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the United States annually, resulting in more than 35,000 deaths.
The release said that a higher volume of in-depth studies will help researchers and medical professionals fully understand the underlying mechanisms of cefiderocol resistance. Additionally, gaining insights into how resistance develops will also help health care providers make informed decisions about when to prescribe certain antibiotics.
“Antibiotic resistance is a growing problem and poses a direct threat to public health in Arkansas, making it crucial to understand and address resistance to protect our communities and improve treatment options,” Huang said in the release.
Huang’s research was funded by the UAMS VCRI Pioneer Award and the UAMS Center for Microbial Pathogenesis and Host Inflammatory Responses, a center supported by an NIH Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant that helps early-career researchers achieve independent funding.
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