A new multimodal imaging approach produced highly-advanced molecular three-dimensional (3D) images of staph infection and may be instrumental in fighting antibiotic resistant infections, according to research published online March 14 in Science Translational Medicine.

“I’m pretty convinced that these are the most advanced images in infection biology,” said corresponding author Eric Skaar, PhD, MPH, with the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at Vanderbilt in a university news story.

Researchers used multiple types of molecular imaging to probe an invasive Staphylococcus aureus or staph infection in a mouse. The approach produced new insights into the infection that can be broadly applied to any health or disease state, Skaar said.

"We came up with this idea of putting all of these imaging modalities together to ask really exciting questions," Skaar said. "When a mouse is infected with a horrible pathogen like staph, can we see how infection damages the tissue, how metals and metalloproteins (metal-binding proteins) are affected, and how bacteria change gene expression, all in one experiment?"

The team used MRI to visualize anatomy, imaging mass spectrometry to follow protein changes, another type of mass spectrometry to study the distribution of metals and bioluminescence imaging to visualize bacterial genes that are expressed when iron is scarce.

Skaar and colleagues also determined that abscesses, the area of inflammation around a bacterial infection—long thought to be identical, actually contained different molecular environments. A finding that may aid vaccine and therapeutic development.

"We can use these imaging modalities to identify proteins that are always expressed by the bacteria, as opposed to genes that are differentially expressed depending on the environment that the bacteria experience. Those factors would be excellent drug targets," Skaar said in the report.

The imaging technique used in this study might also be useful for diagnosing an infectious agent and determining its resistance to certain antibiotics without having to culture it.