Tom Arrowsmith

• CDT Doctoral Researcher Supervisor: Dr Tim Blower
• Email: tom.arrowsmith@durham.ac.uk
• Project title: Harnessing tuberculosis toxins to manipulate bacterial growth

Institution: Durham University

Project Summary: Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the deadliest human diseases on the planet, killing around 1.6 million people each year. Many factors contribute to the success of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb)as a pathogen. Of all studied bacteria, Mtb has the largest complement of “toxin-antitoxin” systems. Though counter-intuitive, activation of these toxins inside the bacteria may permit evasion of attacks by the immune system and conventional antibiotics. By studying how the toxins work, we can better understand how to control bacterial growth, and identify new antibiotic targets, with long-term impact towards the development of new therapies. Studying the recently identified MenAT toxin-antitoxin family is timely and addresses an unmet research need in the fight against drug-resistant strains of the bacterium. By characterising new potential antibiotic targets through a combination of biochemical and computational methodologies, we hope to re-sensitize TB to conventional therapies that would otherwise be rendered ineffective in the presence of functional TA systems.