°®ÍþÄÌapp

The °®ÍþÄÌapp of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has been awarded £2.2 million by the (MRC) to lead a pioneering five-year investigation into the hidden life of Klebsiella pneumoniae, a major antibiotic-resistant bacterium that quietly colonises the gut of billions of healthy individuals worldwide. 

The project will explore how this seemingly harmless gut resident transforms into a life-threatening pathogen, and how understanding its incognito characteristics could unlock new ways to prevent deadly infections. The grant represents one of the few MRC programme awards ever received by LSHTM, underscoring the global urgency and translational potential of this work. 

Klebsiella pneumoniae has been identified as a critical priority pathogen by the UK Government, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization. While commonly associated with hospital-acquired infections, recent studies have shown that many severe cases of Klebsiella infection originate from a more insidious source: the patient’s own gut. 

Healthy people can carry Klebsiella without any symptoms, with gut colonisation rates reaching up to 15% in Western countries and up to 50% in parts of Asia, equating to an estimated 2 billion people globally.  

Though silent while in the gut, Klebsiella can cause invasive and often deadly infections if it crosses into the bloodstream or lungs. Increasingly, these infections are resistant to last-line antibiotics, leaving clinicians with few or no treatment options. 

Professor Jose Bengoechea, the lead researcher for this study, said: “Klebsiella pneumoniae has been singled by the World Health Organization as a global threat to human health. This exciting project will shed new light into an overlook stage of these infections: the asymptomatic gut colonization that precedes the life-threatening blood stream infections, and pneumonia.  

“This project builds up upon previous work of the team to establish a pre-clinical model that will recapitulate the human gut colonisation by Klebsiella. Despite being a discovery science project, its design would allow for a fast-track translation of the results to new ways of preventing the gut colonisation by Klebsiella that could enter clinical trials. “ 

This research programme will investigate the gut environment that allows Klebsiella to colonise undetected, identify the microbial factors that suppress or support its presence, and uncover how the pathogen crosses the intestinal barrier to cause invasive disease. 

The project is designed with a strong translational focus. By understanding how to manipulate the gut microbiome to create a hostile environment for Klebsiella, the research could lay the groundwork for new therapeutic approaches. These may include next-generation probiotics, microbiome-based interventions, antibody therapies, and vaccines — all aimed at preventing colonisation before infection ever occurs.