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Monash scientists debug superbug

4 March 2009

Professor Julian Rood and Dr Dena Lyras have led an international team of researchers to discover the workings of a potentially deadly superbug that targets hospital patients.

An international team of scientists, led by Monash University researchers, has uncovered the workings of a superbug that kills elderly hospital patients worldwide - a discovery that has the potential to save lives and health care systems billions of dollars each year.

The research, published today in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, unravelled ways to genetically modify the bacterium Clostridium difficile and solved the mystery surrounding its toxicity.

Professor Julian Rood from the Department of Microbiology and lead author Dr Dena Lyras made a major scientific breakthrough that allowed mutants of the superbug to be made. They then identified which of two suspected toxic proteins was essential for the bacterium to cause severe disease.

“Contrary to previously accepted scientific belief, our results show that a toxin, which was considered the less important toxin is actually the toxin that causes disease,” Professor Rood said.

“This discovery will lead to new methods for the control and prevention of this disease.”

Professor Rood and Dr Lyras have been working toward this result for more than a decade.

Dr Lyras said strains of Clostridium difficile are found in almost every hospital in Australia.

“It is the major cause of diarrhoea in hospital patients undergoing antibiotic therapy. The antibiotics destroy the 'good' bacteria in the gut, allowing this 'bad' bacterium to grow in the colon, where it causes a chronic bowel infection that is very difficult to treat,” Dr Lyras said.

Their research lays the foundation to find better ways to treat the superbug.

“We are now beginning to understand the workings of the superbug, which allows us to work on treatments for it. We are confident our research will pave the way for future drugs to try to wipe out this disease. I can't put a time frame on how quickly drugs could be developed, but we're certainly on that road to discovery,” Dr Lyras said.