Dr Nuria Andreu Martin

Dr. Nuria Andreu is a Research Associate at the Tuberculosis Group, Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection, Imperial College of London. She earned her PhD in Biotechnology under the supervision of Dr. Isidre Gibert at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain) studying the molecular determinants of virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After that, she spent another year at the same University as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant working on the functional and genetic characterization of two novel drug-resistance systems in M. tuberculosis. In 2008 she joined Dr. Siouxsie Wiles and Dr. Brian Robertson labs at Imperial College to apply her expertise on the development of bioluminescence reporters for in vivo imaging of mycobacteria. This project is supported by an award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the program Facilitation of Tuberculosis Drug Discovery to a consortium led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Curriculum Vitae

Research interests:

Bacterial molecular genetics, host-pathogen interactions, Mycobacterium biology and pathogenesis, bioluminescence imaging to study infection in vivo, drug-resistance systems and drug discovery.

Present research:

Our research interest is the study of the molecular pathogenesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. Improving our knowledge of the infection process and host-pathogen interactions is the key for the development of new drugs to fight this deadly disease. Our approach uses bioluminescence, a versatile reporter technology based in the production of light by luciferase-catalyzed reactions. Among its many applications, bioluminescence can be used to study gene expression and for high throughput drug screening, both in vitro and in vivo, and for the spatiotemporal characterization of the infection process in animal models. To put all this into practice in mycobacteria we have optimised different bioluminescence reporter constructs for these bacteria, first by maximizing the expression of the reporters in vitro, and secondly by determining the best conditions for in vivo imaging, including substrate administration and image acquisition.

Publications:

• N. Andreu, P. Elkington, and S. Wiles. 2012. Molecular Imaging in TB: From the Bench to the Clinic. In: Understanding Tuberculosis - Global Experiences and Innovative Approaches to the Diagnosis. Edited by: Pere-Joan Cardona. InTech
  
• N. Andreu, T. Fletcher, N. Krishnan, S. Wiles and BD Robertson. 2012. Rapid measurement of antituberculosis drug activity in vitro and in macrophages using bioluminescence. J Antimicrob Chemother. 67:404-414. doi: 10.1093/jac/dkr472
  
• N. Andreu, A. Zelmer and S. Wiles. .2011. Noninvasive biophotonic imaging for studies of infectious disease. FEMS Microbiol Rev. 35(2): 360-394. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.2010.00252.x
• N. Andreu, A. Zelmer, T. Fletcher, P. T. Elkington, T. H. Ward, J. Ripoll, T. Parish, G. J. Bancroft, U. Schaible, B. D. Robertson and S. Wiles. 2010. Optimisation of Bioluminescent Reporters for Use with Mycobacteria. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10777. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010777
• N. Andreu and I. Gibert. 2008. Cell population heterogeneity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv. Tuberculosis. 88(6):553-559
• P-J Cardona, C. Y. Soto, C. Martín, B. Giquel, G. Agustí, N. Andreu, E. Guirado, T. Sirakova, P. Kolattukudy, E. Julián and M. Luquin. 2006. Neutral-red reaction is related to virulence and cell wall methyl-branched lipids in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Microbes Infect. 8:183-190.
• N. Andreu, I. Gibert, M. Luquin, P. E. Kolattukudy and T. Sirakova. 2004. Neutral red staining of cells of a sulfolipid-deficient Mycobacterium tuberculosis pks2 mutant proves that sulfolipids are not responsible for this cytochemical reaction. J. Clin. Microbiol. 42:1379-1380.
• N. Andreu, C. Y. Soto, I. Roca, C. Martín, and I. Gibert. 2004. Mycobacterium smegmatis displays the Mycobacterium tuberculosis virulence-related neutral red character when expressing the Rv0577 gene. FEMS Microbiol. Lett. 231:283-289.
• C. Y. Soto, N. Andreu, I. Gibert and M. Luquin. 2002. Simple and rapid differentiation of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra from Mycobacterium tuberculosis clinical isolates through two cytochemical tests using neutral red and nile blue stains. J. Clin. Microbiol. 40, 3021-3024.