Biography

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest public challenges we face today in the prevention and treatment of infections, and resistance to antibiotics is currently a major threat when treating Tuberculosis disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Once M. tuberculosis becomes resistant to the first line of antitubercular antibiotics, the chances of recovery reduce drastically and the price of the treatment also increases, making the treatment unaffordable in developing countries.

Determining beforehand whether a patient possesses a resistant strain of M. tuberculosis is the first step to successful treatment, however working with the pathogen is not only very dangerous but can also be a lengthy process as M. tuberculosis is a slow growing bacterium. Finding a role model organism for M. tuberculosis studies is therefore a must and the objective of my project is to determine whether Mycobacterium komossense could play this role.