Sanna Koskiniemi

Antibiotic resistance is an increasing problem worldwide and new means of treating infections are of essence if we wish to treat bacterial infections in the future.

I investigate the possibility to utilize a newly discovered system that bacteria use to stop the growth of other, competing bacteria, to develop new antimicrobials. This system is special in that it requires direct contact between the bacteria for one bacterium to be able to inhibit the growth of others. In addition, the inhibition is restricted to bacteria of certain species because the delivery of toxin requires species-specific receptors on the target cell surface.

One of our aims is to use these systems to develop more effective probiotics. By arming probiotic bacteria with CDI systems that target pathogenic bacteria specifically we aim to develop bacterial probiotics into targeted killing machines that specifically stop the growth of bacterial pathogens.

I was Young Academy of Sweden's Chair for 2020–2021.