POTSDAM, N.Y. -- This time of year, it can seem like everyone around us is getting sick. And every year, it seems like there are new bacteria that antibiotics can't kill.
Timothy Sellati, Trudeau Associate Member and Clarkson Adjunct Professor, is one of the team members researching these bacteria to find a new way to fight them.
"I think we're going to be able to significantly advance the treatment of patients with a wide variety of infectious diseases," he said. Sellati said this new treatment is like a microscopic needle poking into a balloon. The treatment pokes into the bacteria and destroys it.
"They can kill bacteria, they don't damage our own cells, they can get inside cells to kill intracellular bacteria, and the bacteria cannot develop resistance against them," Sellati said.
Sellati's research stems from a partnership between the Trudeau Institute and Clarkson University combining the fields of immunology and engineering. He believes it's an approach that will have a major impact in the medical field.
"Marrying the power of immunology and our understanding of infectious disease with the techniques, the technologies, the equipment of engineering, the approaches that engineers take."
Sellati and Clarkson Assistnat Professor of Chemistry and Biomolecular Science He Dong have published a paper on this research, and they are still looking at more ways to overcome resistant bacteria.