Urinary Tract Infection Application Poland

Institut für Pharmazeutische Biologie und Phytochemie Prof. Dr. Andreas Hensel WWU | Institut für Pharmazeutische Biologie und Phytpchemie | Corrensstraße 48 | 48149 Münster

Corrensstraße 48 48 149 Münster Bearbeiter

Andreas Hensel Tel. +49 251 83-33380 Fax +49 251 83-33341 ahensel@ uni-muenster.de

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Letter of Intent This is to confirm that it will be a great pleasure to cooperate in the project consortium „ Do natural products of plant origin support the therapy

of urinary tract infections?”

as an international partner. Our lab here at University of Münster, Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology and Phytochemistry is specialized on phytochemistry of plant extracts, isolation and structure elucidation of natural products and functional testing. One major project in the lab sector of bioactivity is the identification of antiadhesive natural products which interact specifically with the pathogen-host interplay (UPEC, H. plyori, Influenza A, HSV1, Porphyromonas gingivalis). We are convinced that blocking of the initial steps of docking of the pathogen to its host cell can be a promising cytoprotective strategy in order to avoid spreading of the bacteria in the tissue, to minimize potential recurrence of the infection and to provide prophylactic strategies. Detailed publications from our lab to this topic can be found at https://www.uni-muenster.de/Chemie.pb/forschung/hensel/index.html. A major pathogen we are dealing with are uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC); this expertise can be implemented into the activities of the planned project. For this we can host a student for 6 to 9 months in our lab to perform studies on antiadhesive properties of relevant extracts or isolated compounds of fecal metabolites. These quantitative studies are performed using FITC-labelled UPEC and flow cytometric evaluation of the adhesion to human T24 bladder cells. For mechanistic evaluation different sequenced UPEC strains can be

27.02.2018

used, differing in outer membrane protein composition and expressing different virulence factors. Prior to these adhesion studies, cytotoxicity of all test compounds/extracts has to be confirmed against the UPEC strains used for adhesion testing and for the T24 cells (MTT assay). For more mechanistically studies the influence of the test compounds on bacterial gene expression can be monitored by qPCR, which is interesting in case the FimH or papG protein assembly machinery is disturbed by the test compounds. We are looking forward to start this exciting project together with the colleagues from Poland.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Hensel