Awarded 01 September 2024
Candida auris is an emerging fungal pathogen, recently elevated to the critical priority group of fungal pathogens by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Of key concern is its ability to cause outbreaks within intensive and chronic care units, which is facilitated through its capacity to persist as biofilms (communities of microbes stuck together on surfaces), tolerate cleaning and disinfection, and be readily transmittable. Our understanding of how this pathogen survives and persists is limited, hampering our capacity to effectively control this critical priority pathogen in the hospital setting.
This NHSScotland Assure-funded study intends to address this knowledge gap by undertaking an epidemiological study of C. auris within Scotland, and in parallel systematically investigate how C. auris survives and tolerates biocides within both controlled laboratory and clinical environments. We hope to understand how much, if any, of this emerging yeast is in Scotland and determine how we can control and prevent its spread. This project brings together expertise from the Safeguarding Infection through Infection Prevention (SHIP) group at Glasgow Caledonian and is supported by experts in clinical microbiology and infection control from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and the University of the West of Scotland.