Projects
Dept. Pathology &Experimental therapeutics
Medical School
University of Barcelona
Spain
Phone: +34 93 4024265
Email: mvinyas@ub.edu
Website: www.ub.edu
Full professor Microbiology
Antiinfective drug discovery, synthetic peptides, Biofilm, AFM, synergism CAMPs-Antibiotics
Our research focuses the exploration of new cationic peptides (CAMP) presumably active as antimicrobial agents. Synergism between CAMPs and conventional antibiotics has been demonstrated and may greatly contribute to the rescue of traditional antimicrobials whose use was abandoned due to their toxicity (since doses may be greatly reduced) or allowing to use antimicrobials to fight resistant bacteria since CAMPs may permeabilize outer membrane (e.g Imipenem and certain CAPMs)., resulting in higher intracellular concentrations of the other antimicrobials. Research is done in cooperation of Fernando Albericio’s team (Organic Chemistry synthesis)
Provide methods to analyse of the effect of new antimicrobials on Biofilm by microbiological methods by AFM and by CLSM. Mechanisms of interaction between CAMPs and membranes can be explored by measurements of the anisotropy of bacterial membranes, as an indicator of membrane fluidity, and the effect of CAMPs decreasing the function of the cellular efflux machinery.