A team of young researchers from the Tri-City has developed an innovative method to assist in the fight against disease where antibiotics have failed.

The group of five all come from the Tri-City and none of them is older than eighteen. They have been working under Professor Michał Obuchowski from the Intercollegiate Faculty of Biotechnology of the University of Gdańsk and the Medical University of Gdańsk.

Together they worked on a new form of therapy which helps to replace antibiotics in the treatment of chronic disease through the modification of E. coli bacteria. In this way, it produces the biomolecule required to eliminate the factors which cause the disease. At first, the team set about to develop a biomolecule in the fight against the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium. The project anticipates the creation of further biomolecules to fight against other diseases.

Who are these young scientists? Each one of them already has great success and a lot of work under their belt. Marcin Pitek was a finalist at Google Science Fair 2012; Olga Grudniak was a laureate in the Adamed SmartUP project; Olgierd Kasprowicz reached the finals of the 2014 Young Physicist Tournament; Filip Krawczyk is one of the organisers of the 2015 TriMAT mathematics conference, while Natalia Dziedzic has dedicated many years to her passion of laboratory work. They are all students at the Third Comprehensive School in Gdynia. They have received a grant from the Black Pearls Foundation for their work.

The Polish researchers’ success comes at a time of worrying news from the World Health Organisation, which has warned of the increasing resistance of pathogens to antibiotics. This means that a new treatment is all the more urgent, one as innovative as that created by the young Pomeranian team.