Breakthrough Reported In Combating The Growing Risk From E. coli Food Poisoning.(Brief Article)

2001 MAY 9 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

Certain pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli appear to harpoon themselves into intestine lining cells in order to colonize large sections of the gut, scientists at Imperial College in London have observed.

The researchers, reporting the breakthrough in the new edition of BBSRC Business on April 5, 2001, hope that by understanding how the bacteria latch onto and colonize their host, they will be able to design novel drugs and vaccines against the bacteria. The team is focusing their research on the O157:H7 strain of E. coli, which caused the death of 21 people in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in 1996 and has more than 73,000 cases reported annually in the U.S.

The breakthrough at Imperial has been made possible by advanced imaging technology that has, for the first time, allowed researchers to zoom in on one of the major bacterial proteins, called intimin, involved in binding the pathogen to gut lining cells.

"The unique thing about the way the pathogen binds to host is that the bacterial cell actually produces and injects one of its receptors into the host cell - harpooning itself to the cell," said Dr. Steve Matthews from Imperial College. "Normally a pathogen will use existing ...