Infectious Disease

Biofilms cause the vast majority of chronic microbial infections and are a large and growing problem in healthcare. Annually, biofilm infections harm at least 17 million Americans, cause at least 550,000 American deaths, and cost the US healthcare system almost $100 billion. We are developing new anti-biofilm strategies based on electron-emitting radioisotopes that can be used to coat surfaces and can also be combined with targeting molecules, such as nanobodies, to treat infections. We will focus on pure electron emitters whose energy is sufficient to penetrate through biofilms yet low enough to have minimal effect on healthy tissue and negligible external radiation hazard.