Federal Grant Award Summary

Northeastern University received a $650,221 Project Grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) under the Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855), awarded June 12, 2026, with completion expected by May 31, 2031. The grant funds development of an efficient antibiotic discovery platform designed to access and mine uncultured bacteria for novel antibiotics. The research addresses a critical gap in microbiology by developing methods to culture environmental bacteria that do not grow in laboratory settings, including soil acidobacteria, verrucomicrobia, and gemmatimonadetes that contain biosynthetic gene clusters with potential for new antimicrobial compounds.

The project delivers multiple methodological innovations to isolate and cultivate previously inaccessible bacterial species. Key products include refined in situ culturing techniques using diffusion chambers, a fluorescence-based sorting method to isolate uncultured bacteria by distinguishing dividing cells from non-dividing ones, and phage receptor protein capture techniques for targeting specific bacterial groups. The research identifies symbiotic helper bacteria that enable growth of uncultured species and produces antimicrobial compound screening results from acidobacteria and verrucomicrobia extracts. These integrated approaches aim to unlock a vast repository of microbial genetic diversity for pharmaceutical antibiotic discovery and development.