Dr. Cristian Luis Rueda, associate professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Science and Mathematics, has been awarded a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
This substantial grant will not only support Luis Rueda’s research, but will also provide practical training opportunities for his undergraduate and graduate students. They will receive practical training to put science education into practice, enabling them to help save lives and change course. of medicine.
By studying these mechanisms, Luis Rueda aims to understand how bacteria can survive long enough to adapt.
“The small molecular machines that bacteria have inside their envelopes are used to pump out antibiotics when they come in to kill them. By pumping these drugs out of the cell, the bacteria can remain free of antibiotics for a while. It can withstand substances,” Luis Rueda said. “And that gives them time to adapt and accumulate more mutations, and over time they become more and more resistant.”
Luis Rueda’s inspiration to pursue antibiotic research came long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I have long been interested in antibiotic research. My Ph.D. My specialty is microbiology, and finding new treatment options was one of my interests. I did a postdoc at Tufts. During my time there, I joined a lab dedicated to understanding antibiotic resistance and ways to combat it,” said Luis Rueda.
He details that during his tenure he realized how big a problem this was.
“So in the past, people who had infections would die. When antibiotics were discovered, they were called miracle drugs. People who were about to die were given antibiotics for several days. Because then it heals like new,” Luis Rueda said.
He elaborated on the importance of antibiotics, which were introduced in the 1940s and transformed modern medicine. However, this advancement led patients to believe that antibiotics were “miracle drugs,” leading many to overuse them and causing bacteria to develop resistance to them. .
“Right now we are going back to the pre-antibiotic era, when you could get an infection, but 10 years ago you could easily treat it with antibiotics. In some cases, it can be very difficult to treat or even cause people to die because there are no antibiotics left to give them…bacteria learn to be resistant to all of them. “I did,” Luis Rueda said.
Ruiz Rueda highlighted the global impact of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to two studies by O’Neill in 2014 and Murray et al. in 2022, “The number of deaths due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria is estimated to increase from 5 million to 10 million per year by 2050.”
This number of deaths will have a direct impact on the economy.
Luis Rueda said, “We’re expected to lose $100 trillion between now and then because sick people can’t go to work.”If antibiotics don’t work, we’ll give them more expensive drugs, We have to keep patients in the hospital for long periods of time, so all of this has a big impact on people’s health and the economy itself.”
The NSF grant will support Luis Rueda’s research on efflux projects that excrete antibiotics from bacterial cells and contribute to drug resistance. It will also fund projects investigating antibiotic resistance to last-resort antibiotics.
“Another part of the story we’re trying to understand is how the regulators that coordinate excretion and metabolism are themselves controlled. Regulators are important in controlling so many physiological processes. Because it has a very broad role,” Luis Rueda said.
Regarding medical challenges related to doctors prescribing antibiotics, Luis Rueda pointed out that doctors may not strictly adhere to guidelines to prescribe antibiotics only when necessary for the patient’s condition.
“It’s easy for doctors to say yes without considering that they promote the selection and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Therefore, antibiotics should only be used for bacterial infections that really need treatment. “, Luis Rueda said.
The grant will support two undergraduate and two graduate students in Luis Rueda’s lab and approximately 20 students in his microbial physiology class. This grant will provide valuable support to the faculty and provide important opportunities for CSUN students pursuing careers in microbiology and related fields.
