As antibiotic resistance surges, phages – viruses that infect and kill bacteria – offer a transformative therapeutic alternative. Insights from this research will guide the design of engineered phages and treatment strategies that work reliably in complex, real-world clinical settings.

Dr Somenath Bakshi

Dr Bakshi will map how bacterial physiology, including cellular resources, energy and stress, controls the infection dynamics of phage – a virus that infects and kills bacteria. To achieve this, he will use a high-throughput microfluidic phage infection assay developed in his lab to track phage infection in individual bacterial cells for the first time.

“As antibiotic resistance surges, phages offer a transformative therapeutic alternative,” said Dr Bakshi. “Insights from our ERC research project will guide the design of engineered phages and treatment strategies that remain effective in highly dynamic environments of real infections, such as urinary tract infections, chronic lung infections and persistent wound infections.”

He added: “Our technology allows us to track the growth and physiology of thousands of individual bacterial cells and record detailed movies of how phages inject their genomes, express genes and eventually break down their hosts.

“We combine this with fluorescent reporters of cell physiology, AI-based advanced image analysis and tracking – using the Synthetic Micrographs of Bacteria (SyMBac) pipeline also developed in our lab – to connect the observed infection dynamics with the physiology of the infected host with unprecedented precision.

“These rich datasets will train a data-driven model of phage infection dynamics grounded in host physiology, allowing us to predict how phages behave across cellular and population scales. We will validate these predictions using our microCOSM platform, which links single-cell dynamics to population-level behaviour in real time.”

The ERC has selected 349 mid-career researchers to receive awards this year. With funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme, the grants support research at universities and research centres in 25 EU Member States – and associated countries including the UK.

The full list of Cambridge recipients who have been awarded ERC funding alongside Dr Bakshi include:

• Dr Davide Luca, Department of Land Economy, for ‘Bridging Rural-urban Individual Divides in Outlooks and Political Engagement’
• Professor Blake Sherwin, Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, for ‘Revealing Cosmic Structure Growth and the Early Universe with the CMB Backlight’
• Dr Alexandra Woolgar, Department of Psychology, for ‘Pinging the brain to reveal hidden neural states underpinning flexible human cognition’
• Dr Emília Santos, Department of Zoology, for ‘A predictive model of diversification and convergence of colour patterns in East African cichlid fishes’
• Dr Emily Mitchell, Department of Zoology, for ‘Understanding selection in the early animals of the Ediacaran’
• Dr Eleanor Raffan, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, for ‘Appetite and Obesity: leveraging the power of dog genetics for biomedical insight’
• Dr Angela Trentacoste, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, for ‘Feeding Roman Italy: Continuities and Innovations in animal production from urbanisation to empire’.

Professor Maria Leptin, President of the ERC, said: “To see all this talent with groundbreaking ideas, based in Europe, is truly inspiring. This bold research may well lead to new industries, improve lives and strengthen Europe’s global standing.

“This was one of the most competitive ERC calls ever, with record demand and many excellent projects left unfunded. It is yet another reminder of how urgent the call for increased EU investment in frontier research has become.”

Ekaterina Zaharieva, European Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, added: “Congratulations to all the researchers on winning the ERC grants. The record budget of €728 million invested to support these scientific projects shows the EU is serious about making the continent attractive for excellent researchers.”

Adapted from a University of Cambridge news article.