Senior Scientist, TB Research, CEPR, Health Protection Agency, Porton Down

Honorary Lecturer,Centre for Medical Microbiology, Department of Infection,Hampstead Campus, UCL

Research Interests

At CEPR my team is developing an in vitro fermenter system for evaluating the efficacy of novel TB compounds using chemostats. We have extensive experience in using these culture systems for growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis under host-like conditions and determining the effects on the physiology, pathogenicity and gene expression of the organism. We are now applying these systems and skills to the evaluation of compounds against the organism.

The chemostat is used for growing bacteria under defined and controlled conditions that can reflect aspects of the host environment. The susceptibility of cells to drugs in these environments provides further information over and above standard MIC evaluations. For example, we are currently looking at the efficacy of current therapies against Mycobacterium tuberculosis at slow and fast growth rates in our chemostat model. We are interested in developing our models further in collaboration with Pharmaceutical groups and testing their compounds for them.

Publications

1) James BW, Bacon J, Hampshire T, Morley K, Marsh PD. In vitro gene expression dissected: chemostat surgery for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Comparative and Functional Genomics 2002; 3: 345-347

2) Hampshire T, Soneji S, Bacon J, James BW, Hinds J, Marsh PD, Butcher PD. Stationary phase survival tactics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis following a progressive nutrient depletion: A model for persistent organisms? Tuberculosis (Edinb) 2004; 84(3-4) 228-23

3) Bacon J, James B.W, Wernisch L, Williams A, Morley KA, Hatch GJ, Mangan JA, Hinds J, Stoker NG, Butcher PD, Marsh PD. The influence of reduced oxygen availability on pathogenicity and gene expression in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (Edinb) 2004; 84(3-4) 205-217

4) Williams A, James BW, Bacon J, Hatch KA, Hatch GJ, Hall GA, Marsh PD. An assay to compare infectivity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates based on aerosol infection of guinea pigs and assessment of bacteriology. Tuberculosis 2005; 85(3) 177-184

5) Vipond J, Vipond R, Allen-Vercoe E, Clark SO, Hatch GJ, Gooch KE, Bacon J, Hampshire T, Shuttleworth H, Minton NP, Blake K, Williams A, Marsh PD.Selection of novel vaccine candidates and their evaluation as DNA vaccines against aerosol challenge. Vaccine. 2006; 11 24(37-39):6340-50.

6) Bacon J, Dover LG, Hatch KA, Zhang Y, Gomes JM, Kendall S, Wernisch L, Stoker NG, Butcher PD, Besra GS, Marsh PD. The lipid composition and transcriptional response of Mycobacterium tuberculosis grown under iron-limitation in continuous culture: identification of a novel wax ester. Microbiology 2007; 153 1435-1444

7) Bacon J and Marsh PD. Transcriptional responses of Mycobacterium tuberculosis exposed to adverse conditions in vitro. Current Molecular Medicine 2007; 7 277-286

8) Sidders B, Withers M, Kendall SL, Bacon J, Waddell SJ, Hinds J, Golby P, Movahedzadeh F, Cox RA, Frita R, Ten Bokum AM, Wernisch L, Stoker NG. Quantification of global transcription patterns in prokaryotes using spotted microarrays. Genome Biol. 2007;8(12):R265.

9) Golby P, Hatch KA, Bacon J, Cooney R, Riley P, Allnutt J, Hinds J, Nunez J, Marsh PD , Hewinson RG, and Gordon SV. Comparative transcriptomics reveals key gene expression differences between the human and bovine pathogens of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Microbiology. 2007; 153(Pt 10):3323-36.

10) Bacon J, Hatch KA. Continuous culture of Mycobacteria Mycobacterial Protocols. 2nd Ed (Brown and Parish eds) Humana Press, New Jersey. 2008;153-172

11). Movahedzadeh F, Williams A, Clark S, Hatch G, Smith D, ten Bokum A, Parish T, Bacon J, Stoker N. Construction of a severely attenuated mutant of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Tuberculosis (Edinb). 2008; 88(5):375-81.

12) Zhang Y, Hatch KA, Wernisch L, Bacon J. A Bayesian change-point model for differential gene expression patterns of the DosR regulon of Mycobacterium tuberculosis BMC Genomics. 2008; 22 (9) 87.

13) Jenkins C, Bacon J, Allnutt J, Hatch KA, Bose A, O Sullivan DM, Arnold C, Gillespie SH, McHugh TD Enhanced heterogeneity of rpoB in Mycobacterium tuberculosis found at low pH. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2009; 63(6):1118-20.

14) Bacon J, Hatch KA, Allnut J. Application of continuous culture for measuring the effect of environmental stress on mutation frequency in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Antibiotic resistance 2nd Ed (Gillespie and McHugh eds) Humana Press, New Jersey. In press

15) Zhang, Yi; Hatch, Kim A,; Bacon, Joanna; Wernisch, Lorenz. An integrated machine learning approach for predicting DosR-regulated genes in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. BMC Systems Biology (2010), 4 No pp. given. CODEN: BSBMCC ISSN:1752-0509. AN 2010:458505 CAPLUS (Copyright (C) 2010 ACS on SciFinder (R))