Recently, the research team led by Professor Wang Lei of our institute revealed that the three main bacteria causing meningitis use the same mechanism to penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and elaborated on its molecular mechanism in detail. Bacterial meningitis has high lethality and serious sequelae, and there is currently a lack of treatment methods. This significant finding, which revealed the mechanism of bacteria penetrating the BBB for the first time, was published online in the internationally renowned academic journal PNAS on September 22.

Bacterial meningitis, an inflammatory response that includes the meninges, arachnoid mater and leptomeninges, is caused by pathogenic bacterial infection. It has a high incidence and mortality rate. Moreover, neurological sequelae such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and epilepsy may accompany bacterial meningitis after healing. Bacterial meningitis has become one of the global public health problem. Therefore, understanding the pathogenic mechanism of meningitis-causing bacteria and finding effective treatments and prevention methods have been a research hotspot in the field of microbiology. The BBB protects the central nervous system and prevents harmful substances or bacteria in the blood from entering the brain. However, meningitis-causing bacteria can penetrate this barrier, invade the brain, and trigger inflammation. However, the molecular mechanism of this penetrating has not been elucidated. After years of dedicated research, the team from our university discovered that major meningitis-causing bacteria - Streptococcus pneumoniae, group B Streptococcus, and neonatal meningitis Escherichia coli - are able to penetrate the BBB by hijacking the intracellular transport of the Transferrin receptor (TfR). The results suggest that the main pathogens of meningitis use a common mechanism penetrates the BBB, and the discovery of this mechanism provides a theoretical basis and potential targets for the development of broad-spectrum drugs for the prevention and treatment of bacterial meningitis. It also provides new ideas for delivering drugs across the BBB. This is the fourth time that Professor Wang Lei’s team has published important research results in PNAS after the first PNAS paper published by our university in 2007.

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Program of China. Professor Wang Lei is the corresponding author of the paper, with Researcher Cheng Zhihui and doctoral students Zheng Yangyang and Yang Wen as co-first authors.