Southampton researchers to tackle threat of antibiotic resistance in new £2.8m laboratories

The university-hospital partnership has won £2.8 million in funding for the facilities as part of a £32 million package awarded to ten sites nationally by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Experts from the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics will use the hub to interact with clinicians to test new diagnostic ideas and pursue opportunities for near-patient research.

Overuse of antibiotics has driven anti-microbial resistance (AMR) - the emergence of bacteria and fungi strains immune to their effects, resulting in infections that kill over 5,000 people each year in the UK. That figure is rising year-on-year and globally there is concern that new strains may emerge that are resistant to all existing antibiotics.

University Hospital Southampton and the University of Southampton's Global Network for Anti-Microbial Resistance and Infection Prevention (UoS NAMRIP) will develop the state-of-the-art research facilities to tackle this threat on the frontline.

Professor Tim Leighton, Director of UoS NAMRIP, said: "This award is a huge achievement and we are extremely grateful to the Department of Health and Social Care. This is an enormous opportunity to close the loop of researchers working with end users to define the key problems and opportunities to address AMR, conduct ground-breaking research to address those, and then progress to end users who can ensure breakthroughs are translated out to benefit on a societal scale."

Located at the heart of Southampton General Hospital, researchers at the laboratories will work directly with consultants and services including adult and children's medicine, major surgery, infectious diseases and emergency care.

Southampton is already at the forefront of world-leading clinical research in infectious diseases through studies such as a pioneering use of genetically-modified harmless bacteria to dislodge strains that cause life-threatening meningitis by Professor Robert Read, Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Southampton Biomedical Research Unit and lead applicant on the facilities award.

Within the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics,Professor James Wilkinson is continuing to progress his exploration of optical devices for biological sensing applications, exploiting the mass-manufacturing techniques used in silicon microelectronics for mass-producible optical diagnostic technology.

In one instance, James and colleagues Professor Robert Read, Professor Michalis Zervas of the Zepler Institute and Professor Phil Bartlett in Chemistry are utilising funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to generate a low cost instrument for infection diagnostics.

"In the later phases of our funded EPSRC projects, the instruments we realise will be installed in the new facilities to allow systematic clinical evaluation after the basic research stage," he said. "Precise, rapid, simultaneous detection of multiple resistant bacteria in patients with common infections will reduce inappropriate antimicrobial use, one of the key aims of AMR research."

An earlier European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant provided some of the work underpinning present Raman and Mid-Infrared biosensor research, but also led to research in the unexpected direction of detection and identification of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as biomarkers for disease, in collaboration with Dr Nicola Englyst, Professor Judith Holloway and Dr David Smith in Medicine.

The new laboratories will include flow-cytometry and nanoparticle analysis to extend this research to enable characterisation of EVs for infection diagnostics and to advance nanoparticle-based antibiotic delivery methods for targeting intracellular bacteria.