More precise treatment
The mTORUS project, funded by The LOOP Zurich, will use AI to explore novel treatments for urinary tract infections. Professor Gunnar Rätsch and Senior Scientist Andre Kahles from the Biomedical Informatics Lab are among the researchers involved.
The LOOP Zurich research centre combines expertise from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and the four university hospitals in Zurich with the aim of developing more personalized therapies. One of the new projects supported by The LOOP Zurich targets urinary tract infections and involves Professor Gunnar Rätsch and Senior Scientist Andre Kahles from the Biomedical Informatics Lab at the Department of Computer Science.
150 million people worldwide are affected by urinary tract infections every year, often recurrent. The standard treatment is antibiotics, but these do not always help and can lead to resistance. Antibiotics also damage the 'good' bacteria that are part of the microbiome in the urinary and intestinal tract. The mTORUS project (microbiome-based Therapeutic Options for Recurrent Urinary Symptoms), funded over the next five years by The LOOP Zurich, aims to fight disease-causing bacteria with genetically adapted bacteriophages and to transplant healthy microbiomes into patients.
The project will first use AI to analyse vast amounts of data from a great number of patients in order to learn what makes up a healthy microbiome and how the bacteria interact with the immune system so that in the future, personalised therapies can be offered.
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