Antibiotic tolerance in E.coli in vitro UTI models

Presented by  Daniela Imane EL MEOUCHE (INSERM, IAME, UMR1137, Paris)

Organised by Zeynep BAHAROGLU

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are a major health problem and an example where recurrences and increased antimicrobial resistance occur. Even in the absence of genetic resistance, UTI are not totally cleared by treatment and tend to relapse. Antibiotic tolerance and persistence are potentially a significant contributor to infection relapse but overlooked in clinical tests. They occur when populations or sub-populations survive bactericidal treatments for a longer duration without a resistance mechanism.

In this talk, I will discuss the different in vitro and in vivo approaches that we are currently using to understand why bacteria that are sensitive to antibiotic survive.

I will discuss our advances in using engineered genetic circuits to study the heterogeneity of E. coli division and antibiotic response in vivo in murine pyelonephritis and prostatitis models. This allows us to understand the cell’s antibiotic response in different niches of infection. I will also describe our work aiming to decipher genetic mechanisms of antibiotic tolerance in extraintestinal E. coli strains. Finally, I will present our work towards identifying microbiological factors involved in treatment failure using collections of strains causing recurrent infections.