PolyU ground-breaking research on novel treatment against “superbug” listed 2023 Top Ten I&T News in Hong Kong | PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research (PAIR)

A PolyU research discovered the pathogenic mechanism of and novel treatment against “superbug” was listed among the 2023 Top Ten I&T News in Hong Kong by the Beijing Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre. The research was led by Prof. CHEN Sheng, Member of the Research Institute for Future Food (RiFood), Member of the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology Drug Discovery, Chair Professor of Microbiology and Head of Department of Food Science and Nutrition.

The team discovered a newly emerged genetic variant of Klebsiella pneumoniae, namely the hyper-resistant and hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (CR-hvKP). This superbug is not only multidrug-resistant, but also highly invasive. It can cause untreatable and fatal infections even in healthy individuals. To date, CR-hvKP has been regarded as an “urgent threat to human health” by many medical experts worldwide.

After several years of intensive research, the team has made breakthroughs in their efforts to delineate the pathogenic mechanism of CR-hvKP and devise effective intervention strategies. For the first time in the world, the team discovered that immunosuppressants can be used in the treatment of CR-hvKP infection, bringing important insights for the design of clinical treatments in the future.

The research findings have recently been published in two prestigious journals, namely Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapyunder Nature and Journal of Infection.