Ben's PLOS One Paper Online

Ben's final first-author paper from the lab went online today at PLOS One.  In it, he showed that plant flavones enhance the efficacy of antibiotics as well as secretions from respiratory epithelial cells against Pseudomonas.  Flavones are also agonists of the bitter taste receptor T2R14, which is expressed in airway cell cilia and activates bactericidal NO responses.  Flavones have two potential therapeutic mechanisms as potential therapeutics for respiratory infections: activation of NO-mediated pathways as well as enhancement of antimicrobial peptide function.  More work is needed to determine if and how to leverage these compounds to stimulate and/or enhance airway cell innate immunity.

Congrats to Ben on a great paper that caps of a very productive time in the lab.  A lot of hard work with into developing/adapting and carrying out off these anti-bacterial assays.  A link to the PDF is here.  

The full citation is

Hariri, B.M., McMahon, D.B., Chen, B., Adappa, N.D., Palmer, J.N., Kennedy, D.W., and Lee, R.J.  "Plant flavones enhance antimicrobial activity of respiratory epithelial cell secretions against Pseudomonas aeruginosa."  PLOS One. 12: e0185203.