Boston University scientist wins prize for infection-fighting strategy

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

Kyle Allison, a biomedical engineer at Boston University, was named a winner today of the Collegiate Inventors Competition for his work on a novel therapy to fight bacteria that slip into a zombie-like state, causing chronic infections.

Allison won the $15,000 first prize among graduate students in the competition, sponsored by nonprofit foundations Invent Now, the Abbott Fund, and the Kauffman Foundation, and the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Allison’s prize-winning invention stemmed from an insight into how to wake up “persisters” -- bacteria that cause recurrent infections by essentially playing dead when treated with antibiotics. His research showed that a sugar, called mannitol, could help wake up the bacteria so that they could be knocked out by an antibiotic.

The intervention helped eradicate urinary tract infections in mice, and was featured in a Globe story earlier this year.

A Yale University team won the $12,500 undergraduate first prize for a device that takes 3-D images of skin abnormalities, enabling doctors to remotely examine a patient for signs of skin cancer. A Harvard University team was also a finalist for a portable cranial drill.

In an interview before the winners were announced in Washington, D.C., Allison said he is examining whether the same approach would work against other persistent bacterial infections, such as tuberculosis and an infection that commonly afflicts people with cystic fibrosis, called Pseudomonas aeruginosa. He is also collaborating on plans to commercialize the technology, with the hope that it could be tested in human patients.

Allison said a lot of hard work went into the discovery, as he tried to find ways to perk up the persister cells so that they would be vulnerable to antibiotics.

“I started out by failing a great deal at what I was actually trying to do,” Allison said, describing initial efforts to wake up the persisters. Eventually, “I thought maybe it’s not necessarily to wake them up completely -- sugar is a good source of energy.”