Scientists have been given funding to study how some healthy people are naturally protected from Salmonella Typhimurium infection.
The five-year project will receive more than £4.5 million ($6 million) in Wellcome Discovery funding. Wellcome is a charity supporting scientific research.
Led by Professor Jay Hinton with assistance from Dr Blanca Perez-Sepulveda, Professor Roy Goodacre and Dr Ed Cunningham-Oakes from the University of Liverpool, the team also includes Lisa Mayer from the University of Tübingen, Professor Wolf Hardt from ETH Zurich and Dr Malik Gibani from Imperial College London.
Building on the work of a research group studying invasive non-gastric Salmonella in Africa, this new initiative shifts the focus to colonization resistance—the ability of the gut microbiota to prevent infection.
Finding out why some people are resistant
The study is a follow-up to the Human Nontyphoidal Salmonella Challenge (CHANTS), a £3 million ($4 million) Wellcome-funded project recently completed by Dr Gibani's team at Imperial College London, with support from Professor Hinton.
In the CHANTS study, 50 healthy volunteers were deliberately exposed to Salmonella Typhimurium by drinking a vial of the bacteria. Some individuals showed complete resistance to colonization – a discovery that forms the scientific basis of the new project.
Using experimental models of the human gut microbiota, the team will investigate how microbial composition, nutrient utilization and dietary factors determine resistance to Salmonella Typhimurium infection.
Using data from the CHANTS study with multi-omics analysis of infection dynamics, they aim to identify the microbial mechanisms that mediate resistance to colonization.
Dr. Perez-Sepúlveda said: “This award allows us to study the invisible protectors – the gut microbiota – and understand why some healthy people never become colonized when deliberately exposed to Salmonella bacteria. Ultimately, we hope that it will be possible to modify the microbiota of susceptible children in Africa to prevent invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella disease.”
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