Skip to Content
800-533-8762
  • Careers
  • Newsroom
  • Health Care Professionals
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
UPMC
  • Find a Doctor
  • Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
    • Frequently Searched Services
      Allergy & Immunology Behavioral & Mental Health Cancer Ear, Nose & Throat Endocrinology Gastroenterology Heart & Vascular Imaging Neurosciences Orthopaedics
      Physical Rehabilitation Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Primary Care Senior Services Sports Medicine Telemedicine Transplant Surgery Walk-In Care Weight Management Women’s Health
      See all Services
    • Services by Region
    • Find a UPMC health care facility close to you quickly by browsing by region.
      UPMC in Western Pa. Western Pa. and New York
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Services
  • Locations
    • Locations by Type
    • Locations by Type
      UPMC hospitals
      Hospitals
      Physical Therapy
      Physical Therapy
      Urgent care
      Walk-In Care
      UPMC Outpatient Centers
      Outpatient Centers
      UPMC Imaging Services
      Imaging
      Community Health Centers
      Community Health Centers
      See All Locations
    • Locations by Region
    • Locations by Region
      UPMC in Southwest Pa. Southwest Pa.
      UPMC in North Central Pa. North Central Pa.
      UPMC in Northwest Pa and Ny. Northwest Pa. & Western N.Y.
      UPMC in West Central Pa. West Central Pa.
      UPMC in Central Pa. Central Pa.
      UPMC in Western Md. Maryland & West Virginia
    • See All Locations
  • Patients & Visitors
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
      Patients and Visitors Resources Pay a Bill Classes & Events Medical Records Health Library Patient Information
      Patient Portals Privacy Information Shared Decision Making Traveling Patients Visitor Information
      Man uses mobile phone
      Pay a Bill
      Nurse reviews medical chart
      Request Medical Records
  • Patient Portals
  • Find Covid-19 updates
  • Schedule an appointment
  • Request medical records
  • Pay a bill
  • Learn about financial assistance
  • Find classes & events
  • Send a patient an eCard
  • Make a donation
  • Volunteer
  • Read HealthBeat blog
  • Explore UPMC Careers
Skip to Content
UPMC
  • Patient Portals
  • For Patients & Visitors
    • Find a Doctor
    • Locations
    • Patient & Visitor Resources
    • Pay a Bill
    • Services
    • More
      • Medical Records
      • Financial Assistance
      • Classes & Events
      • HealthBeat Blog
      • Health Library
  • About UPMC
    • Why UPMC
    • Facts & Stats
    • Supply Chain Management
    • Community Commitment
    • More
      • Financials
      • Support UPMC
      • UPMC Apps
      • UPMC Enterprises
      • UPMC International
  • For Health Care Professionals
    • Physician Information
    • Resources
    • Education & Training
    • Departments
    • Credentialing
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Newsroom
  • UPMC >
  • Media Relations >
  • News Releases >
  • 032125 antimicrobials
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS
Media Relations
News Releases
Central Pa. News
North Central Pa. News
Contact Us
Experts
Community-Focused News
Media Kits
Media RSS

Chat Keywords List

  • cancel or exit: Stops your conversation
  • start over: Restarts your current scenario
  • help: Shows what this bot can do
  • terms: Shows terms of use and privacy statement
  • feedback: Give us feedback
Continue
Chat with UPMC
RESTART
MENU
CLOSE

Deadly Bacteria Developed the Ability to Produce Antimicrobials and Wiped-Out Competitors

For Journalists

Allison Hydzik
Director, Science and Research
412-647-9975
hydzikam@upmc.edu

Beth Mausteller
Manager
412-297-2298
MaustellerE@upmc.edu

Want to Make an Appointment or Need Patient Information?
Contact UPMC at

1-800-533-8762.

Go to Find a Doctor to search for a UPMC doctor.

2023 PITT HS

3/21/2025

Daria Van Tyne PhDPITTSBURGH – A drug-resistant type of bacteria that has adapted to health care settings evolved in the past several years to weaponize an antimicrobial genetic tool, eliminating its cousins and replacing them as the dominate strain. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists made the discovery when combing through local hospital data – and then confirmed that it was a global phenomenon.

 

The finding, published today in Nature Microbiology, may be the impetus for new approaches in developing therapeutics against some of the world’s deadliest bacteria. It also validates a new use for a system developed at Pitt and UPMC that couples genomic sequencing with computer algorithms to rapidly detect infectious disease outbreaks. 

 

“Our lab has a front row seat to the parade of pathogens that move through the hospital setting,” said senior author Daria Van Tyne, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine in Pitt’s Division of Infectious Diseases. “And when we took a step back and zoomed out, it quickly became apparent that big changes were afoot with one of the world’s more difficult-to-treat bacteria.”

 

The Enhanced Detection System for Healthcare-Associated Transmission (EDS-HAT) analyzes the genetic signatures of infections in hospitalized patients and flags patterns, allowing clinicians to intervene and stop potential outbreaks in real-time. But lead author Emma Mills, a microbiology and immunology graduate student in Van Tyne’s lab, realized that EDS-HAT was also a treasure trove of detailed historic information that she could mine to learn about the evolution of bacteria over time. 

 

Mills focused on vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm), so-called because it can’t be eradicated with the popular antibiotic vancomycin. VREfm kills about 40% of the people it infects and is a particular plague on immunocompromised and hospitalized patients, who are often taking antibiotics that decrease the diversity of bacteria in their microbiomes, allowing drug-resistant bacteria, such as VREfm, to thrive. 

 

After analyzing the genomic sequences of 710 VREfm infection samples from hospitalized patients entered into EDS-HAT over a six-year time span, Mills discovered that the variety of VREfm strains had shrunk from about eight fairly evenly distributed types in 2017 to two dominant strains that began to emerge in 2018 and, by the end of 2022, were the culprit in four out of every five patient VREfm samples. 

 

Upon closer examination, Mills found that the dominant strains had acquired the ability to produce a bacteriocin, which is an antimicrobial that bacteria use to kill or inhibit one another. They’d weaponized this new capability to destroy the other VREfm strains, giving them unfettered access to nutrients for easier reproduction. 

 

This further sparked Mills’s curiosity: If this was happening at the local hospital, was it happening elsewhere? No prior research publications had explored the possibility that this was a global phenomenon, so she consulted a publicly available library of more than 15,000 VREfm genomes collected globally from 2002 through 2022. Sure enough, what she’d observed locally had also been happening on a global scale. 

 

Emma Mills_HR“This was a completely unexpected discovery – I was surprised to see such a dramatic signal,” said Mills. “Once these strains are in an institutional setting – such as a hospital – and are matched up against other strains of VRE in a patient’s gut, they take over. It’s a ‘kill your buddies and eat their food’ scenario.”

  

Van Tyne said the finding doesn’t have immediate clinical consequences – it does not appear that the bacteriocin-wielding VREfm are making patients any sicker than their predecessors did. But it could point to potential avenues for the development of new therapies. 

 

“The diversity of the VRE population appears to be narrowing from lots of different types causing infection to only a few. That means we may soon have only one single target for which to design therapeutics such as antibiotics or phage therapy,” Van Tyne said. “It also suggests that bacteriocins are very potent and perhaps we could weaponize them for our own purposes.”

 

Additional authors of the study are Katharine Hewlett, Alexander B. Smith, Ph.D., and Joseph P. Zackular, Ph.D., of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and Marissa P. Griffith, Lora Pless, Ph.D., Alexander J. Sundermann, Dr.P.H., and Lee H. Harrison, M.D., of Pitt. 

 

This research was funded by National Institutes of Health grants R01AI165519, R01AI127472 and R35GM138369.  

 


PHOTO DETAILS (click images for high-res versions)

 

Right photo

CAPTION: Daria Van Tyne, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine in the University of Pittsburgh's Division of Infectious Diseases 

CREDIT: University of Pittsburgh

 

Left photo

CAPTION: Emma Mills, a microbiology and immunology graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh 

CREDIT: Emma Mills

 

 


UPMC
200 Lothrop Street Pittsburgh, PA 15213

412-647-8762 800-533-8762

Patients And Visitors
  • Find a Doctor
  • Locations
  • Pay a Bill
  • Patient & Visitor Resources
  • Disabilities Resource Center
  • Services
  • Medical Records
  • No Surprises Act
  • Price Transparency
  • Financial Assistance
  • Classes & Events
  • Health Library
Health Care Professionals
  • Physician Information
  • Resources
  • Education & Training
  • Departments
  • Credentialing
Newsroom
  • Newsroom Home
  • Inside Life Changing Medicine Blog
  • News Releases
About
  • Why UPMC
  • Facts & Stats
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Community Commitment
  • Financials
  • Supporting UPMC
  • HealthBeat Blog
  • UPMC Apps
  • UPMC Enterprises
  • UPMC Health Plan
  • UPMC International
  • Nondiscrimination Policy
Life changing is...
Follow UPMC
  • Contact Us
  • Website/Email Terms of Use
  • Medical Advice Disclaimer
  • Privacy Information
  • Active Privacy Alerts
  • Sitemap
© 2025 UPMC I Affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences Supplemental content provided by Healthwise, Incorporated. To learn more, visit healthwise.org
Find Care
Providers
Video Visit
Portal Login