Ana Flores-Mireles
University of Notre Dame, IN·Microbiology & Immunology
Placing a urinary catheter is routine, yet it is also one of the fastest ways a patient acquires an infection in a hospital. Catheter-associated urinary tract infections, or CAUTIs, account for roughly 40% of healthcare-associated infections worldwide, can progress to bloodstream infection, and are increasingly difficult to treat as antibiotic and antifungal resistance spreads.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
catheter-associated urinary tract infection
Candida albicans
Enterococcus faecalis
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Characterize how Candida albicans hyphal morphology, its filamentous virulent form, and the host immune signals MIP-1α and IL-17A modulate catheter-associated urinary tract infection in the bladder.
- Determine how neutrophils, the immune system's first-responder white blood cells, contain fungal infection in the catheterized bladder, and identify fungal determinants of inflammation, immune evasion and persistent infection.
- Test whether Efg1, the transcriptional regulator required for the urine-induced switch to hyphal form, controls the factors enabling Candida albicans to persistently colonize the bladder and evade immunity.
- Map how Escherichia coli suppresses Candida albicans by measuring EFG1 and downstream gene expression with RNA sequencing and RT-PCR validation in culture and in infected mice.
- Identify the small secreted Escherichia coli peptides responsible for inhibiting fungal growth and hyphal formation, using mass spectrometry-based proteomics.
- Test whether the Enterococcus faecalis secreted proteases SprE and GelE degrade E. coli's inhibitory peptides, explaining how E. faecalis co-infection boosts Candida albicans bladder and catheter colonization.
- Develop liquid-infused urinary catheter coatings that limit deposition of host proteins such as fibrinogen, the clotting protein that forms a platform for microbial attachment, and assess biofilm formation in vitro.
- Characterize in a mouse model of catheter-associated urinary tract infection how modulating catheter protein deposition affects biofilm formation, bladder colonization, systemic dissemination and inflammation, using proteomic, histological and immunological approaches.
More about the research
CAUTIs differ from ordinary urinary tract infections in which organisms cause them: catheterization opens the bladder to microbes that would not normally take hold, including Enterococcus, Staphylococcus aureus, Candida species, Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii. Three projects address this from different angles: how the bladder responds to a fungal invader, how several pathogens interact when they infect together, and how the catheter surface itself can be engineered to be less hospitable.
Why it matters
Catheter use is expected to keep rising with an aging population, while antibiotic and antifungal resistance narrows treatment options. Mapping the fungal factors and host immune responses behind Candida albicans catheter infections could guide new diagnostics and antifungal strategies, understanding multi-species interactions could improve treatment of the polymicrobial infections that dominate long-term catheterization, and catheter coatings that limit protein deposition offer a prevention route that does not rely on drugs and so does not drive further resistance.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Understanding the bladder inflammatory and immune responses to fungal catheter-associated urinary infections
NIH · Jul 2026 – Jun 2031
Elucidating fungal and bacterial polymicrobial interactions during catheter-associated urinary tract infections
NIH · Jul 2025 – Jun 2027
Understanding the role of catheter-associated protein deposition in the development of CAUTI
NIH · May 2021 – Feb 2027
Closest labs
Scott J. Hultgren
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how shape changes in bacterial adhesins control attachment, comparing FimH of uropathogenic E. coli and Klebsiella, the pectin-binding YehD and the fibrinogen-binding Abp2D of Acinetobacter using structural biology, molecular dynamics and biochemistry.
Jose Lemos
University of Florida, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
Uncover the regulatory mechanisms that let Streptococcus mutans tolerate high zinc, focusing on ZccE, a zinc-exporting pump unique to this species, and its regulator ZccR, using genetic and mutational approaches.
Nicole Gilbert
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Optimize the design and fabrication of 3D-bioprinted catheter tubing that carries live Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG, a probiotic strain, for long-lasting release of bacteria, lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide.
The school
University of Notre Dame: 19 labs on PI Pages, $346M a year on research, 277 research doctorates a year.
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