Pneumonia
Dr Jim Huggett, Prof Alimuddin Zumla & Dr Robert Miller
University College London
2006 – 2009 Research Assistant
In vitro culture of Pneumocystis jirovecii.
Dr Jim Huggett is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Molecular Group, at the Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health at University College London.
Prof Alimuddin Zumla is Professor and Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases and International Health at University College London.
Dr Robert Miller is Reader in Clinical Infection at University College London.
Pneumocystic pneumonia (PCP) is a major problem in immunocompromised patients, particularly affecting AIDS patients, as well as the elderly, premature or malnourished children, cancer patients and organ transplant recipients. The disease is caused by a yeast-like micro-organism, Pneumocystis jirovecii, which infects the lungs.
At present Pneumocystis jirovecii cannot be reliably cultured in vitro. Consequently the standard method for obtaining large numbers of this pathogen is to grow it in the lungs of immunocompromised animals and harvest them when the animals become morbidly ill. A major flaw in this strategy is that pneumocystis micro-organisms are host species-specific. P. carinii infects rats and is a different species to P. jirovecii, responsible for the human disease. Thus, much current knowledge of the biology, mode of transmission, factors affecting virulence and mechanisms of drug resistance in pneumocystis has been obtained studying a different pathogen in a different host species. Findings from such animal studies may not extrapolate to the human disease.
This Dr Hadwen Trust-funded research will develop and assess the first in vitro culture method for the human-infecting P. jirovecii. This will provide a valuable tool for basic research and potentially a diagnostic test for PCP, and would negate the need for much of the current animal work conducted to study the condition.
The initial objective will focus on developing molecular methods for assessing the human pathogen’s viability. The longer-term objectives will develop culture strategies to enable a range of studies needed to address the unanswered biological questions associated with this pathogen. Both long- and short-term objectives will contribute to the replacement of animal research, as they focus on the species infecting humans and not that infecting rodents.