SCIENTISTS in the region have taken an important step forward in their battle against the threat of mutating superbugs.

A team at Durham University headed by Professor Adrian Walmsley has succeeded in isolating a protein from the micro-organism which causes cholera.

If they can isolate two more proteins used by the bacteria to defend itself against drugs it will be a world first.

While cholera is mainly found in poorer, developing countries, Prof Walmsley believes that it is only a matter of time before it becomes resistant to conventional antibiotic drugs.

The nightmare of killer diseases like cholera returning to haunt the developed world could be less than a decade away unless efforts to find new ways of fighting bacteria are successful, the professor argues.

Scientists at the Queen's Campus at Stockton are also trying to discover key changes in human protein which may be responsible for diseases such as cancer and muscular dystrophy.

The Durham University team are close to understanding the structure of the cholera bug's protective outer membrane. Only a handful of other cutting-edge scientists in the world has got this far.

The team has also identified what they believe is a trigger mechanism which allows bacteria to switch on and off a variety of drug-resistant genes.

The next step is to use a technique called crystallography to study protein in the cholera sample.

"Ideally we would like to understand the structure of all three proteins involved in defending the organism," said Prof Walmsley.

When a toxic antiobiotic drug penetrates the outer membrane of a bacteria the organism reacts by developing minute "pumps" made up of protein, which eject lethal drug residues.

"We have made a lot of progress. We are working on identifying the structure of a protein pump which we have isolated but we need to do more work," says Prof Walmsley.

To make rapid progress the Stockton unit needs to acquire an expensive and sophisticated piece of hardware, an x-ray defractometer. Currently the Stockton team have to rely on sharing a defractometer based in Cambridge.

Prof Walmsley is hopeful that a defractometer could be acquired in the near future.

"The x-ray machine is they key. It will put our research on to a different plane. It will allow us to do everything here at Stockton," he adds. The infectious diseases unit at the Queen's Campus continues to expand.

There is now a full complement of scientists dealing with bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitical threats to human health.