K. pneumoniae is one of the pathogens in human medicine for which new antibiotics urgently need to be developed. In suckling piglets, the pathogen can cause septicaemia and is classified as an emerging pathogen. The aims of Dr Ann-Kathrin Krieger's dissertation work were to establish a new porcine in vitro bacteraemia model for Klebsiella pneumoniae, to characterise the pathogen-host interaction and to investigate the effect of antimicrobial peptides in this model. Through the successful establishment of the in vitro model, the work can contribute significantly to the reduction of animal experiments with heavy stress in the future. Dr Ann-Kathrin Krieger's results show that an antimicrobial peptide from the apidaecine group exerts a strong antimicrobial effect against this important pathogen in infected blood. Apidaecins are peptide antibiotics with a high proportion of the amino acids proline and arginine. They were originally identified in the honey bee (Apis mellifera).
The various antimicrobial peptides were kindly provided by the AG Prof. Ralf Hofmann (BBZ; Institut für Bioanalytische Chemie). On 6 July 2023, Dr Ann-Kathrin Krieger was awarded the Wilhelm-Ellenberger Prize for the best dissertation in 2022 at the doctoral ceremony of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. We congratulate Anka on this great success!