u-Care: Deep Ultraviolet Light Therapies
The emergence of antibiotic resistant bacterial strain is predicted to lead to 10 million annual deaths by 2050. There is therefore a pressing need to develop antibacterial therapies to which pathogens cannot become resistant. It has been previously demonstrated that light from the deep-ultraviolet part of the spectrum (wavelengths between 190-225nm) can target bacteria, whilst causing minimal damage to mammalian cells.
The U-care project is developing technologies capable of generating deep-UV light and delivering it to previously poorly accessible regions of a patient’s body, such as catheters, endotracheal tubes, surgical wound sites, and the distal lung. This technology will allow for the prophylactic and therapeutic killing of pathogens, without the use of antibiotics, and via a mechanism by which pathogens cannot develop resistance.