??????Division of Medical Microbiology
?
Resear?ch??
The Division's research activities focus on several key areas within Medical Microbiology and Immunology. A major emphasis is antimicrobial resistance in critical bacterial pathogens, investigating the epidemiology, mechanisms, and spread across clinical, community, environmental, and agricultural settings using a One Health approach, and exploring the interplay between resistance, virulence factors, the host innate immune response, and clinical outcomes.
Our microbiome research explores the impact of dysbiosis on human health, particularly focusing on the effects of antibiotics and disease treatments on the gut, respiratory, and oral microbiomes, including on the carriage of resistance genes, also called the resistome.
Under diagnostic development, we aim to improve pathogen identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing. Projects focus on advanced molecular techniques like real-time PCR and next-generation sequencing, including clinical metagenomics, for rapid and accurate diagnosis of infectious diseases, with a focus on utility in resource-limited settings.
Immunology research encompasses several areas. HIV immunology studies the nature of immune dysfunction in chronic infection, particularly in children and adolescents on long-term antiretroviral therapy. This work encompasses extensive immune profiling in relation to persistent immune and inflammatory abnormalities and how they relate to co-morbidity development. Particular areas of investigation include a focus on inflammasome-associated cytokines, complement and gut translocation products in predisposing toward neuroinflammation and risk for neurocognitive impairment. The interplay of aberrant immune status and the viral reservoir is also being explored.
Research on inborn errors of immunity, specifically Mendelian susceptibility to mycobacterial disease, investigates functional immune defects in the interferon-γ and IL-12 pathways, linking genetic variants to immune dysfunction and susceptibility to mycobacterial infections. Finally, research into phagocyte function and its relationship to bacterial virulence mechanisms and antibiotic inhibition pathways is being explored in the context of bloodstream infections.
??
