Queen's Joins Cystic Fibrosis Research Programme

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast are taking part in a new €6m bid to find treatments for Cystic Fibrosis.

Professor Stuart Elborn will lead the study at Queen's University, which is the lead partner in the new research programme.

Affecting more than 10,000 people in the UK, Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is one of the most common life-threatening inherited diseases.

The new global programme, known as CF Matters, aims to develop personalised antibiotic treatments for the chest infections that are commonly caused by the disease.

The study brings together renowned CF clinicians and scientists from 12 academic institutions and hospitals across Europe and the USA.

It is led by University College Cork with Queen’s as a lead partner. It will involve lab-based research and clinical trials with 252 patients in seven countries, including around 40 in Northern Ireland.

Queen's lead on the study is Professor Stuart Elborn, Director of Queen's Centre for Infection and Immunity.

He said: "When patients have a flare-up they are treated with several antibiotics but it isn’t always effective and can lead to antibiotic resistance. In this study we will use molecular next generation DNA sequencing methods to detect all the bacteria present in the sputum of CF patients and use this knowledge to determine what antibiotics should be used in individual patients.

"This personalised antibiotic treatment will be compared with standard therapy for CF patients. We will determine the patient’s immune response to all the different bacteria present in the sputum. Using models of infection we will also discover the effect of these bacteria on lung inflammation and infection. The overall impact will be to determine if all bacteria present contribute significantly to lung infection in CF patients and subsequently identify the most effective antibiotic treatment for patients infected with these bacteria."

The study will involve a team of scientists from Queen's Centre for Infection and Immunity including Professor Cliff Taggart, Dr Rebecca Ingram and Dr Sinéad Weldon and Dr Michael Tunney from the School of Pharmacy.

(IT/CD)