Caitlyn Holmes
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Sepsis, organ failure caused by a disordered response to infection, is a leading cause of death worldwide and the most expensive condition treated in hospitals. Bloodstream infections often set it off, and Gram-negative bacteria cause roughly half of them.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
Klebsiella pneumoniae
bacteremia
bloodstream infection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Define how macrophages in the spleen, immune cells that engulf bacteria, restrict Klebsiella pneumoniae during bloodstream infection, a site rarely studied in Gram-negative disease.
- Define the host pathways macrophages use to restrict K. pneumoniae, using CRISPR genomic screening to switch off candidate host genes one at a time.
- Discover the bacterial mechanisms that let K. pneumoniae resist macrophage killing by triggering host cell death, drawing on existing transposon sequencing data to identify required bacterial genes.
- Test whether tissue-resident macrophages form distinct niches that either restrict or permit K. pneumoniae depending on the bacterium's initiation of cell death.
More about the research
Klebsiella pneumoniae is the second leading cause of Gram-negative bloodstream infection and a frequent source of infections acquired in hospitals. Such infections unfold in three phases: infection at an initial site, spread into the blood, and survival inside organs that filter blood. Bacterial fitness in the lung, a common starting site, has been studied; survival in the filtering organs is largely unexplored.
Why it matters
K. pneumoniae in the bloodstream can trigger sepsis, a major cause of illness and the costliest hospital-treated condition. Identifying the host pathways that clear the bacterium and the bacterial tricks that defeat them could point to targets for future therapies that help patients clear bloodstream infections, potentially extending to other Gram-negative pathogens and other organ sites.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Madison Collins
Montana State University, MT·Microbiology & Immunology
Test the hypothesis that molecules controlled by the S. aureus SaeR/S gene regulatory system disrupt autophagy, a self-digestion process that kills trapped microbes, in human neutrophils after they swallow the bacteria.
Samithamby Jeyaseelan
Louisiana State University, LA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how the antioxidant regulator Nrf2 affects survival, bacterial clearance and neutrophil accumulation and function during carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) pneumonia in mice.
Allyson Shea
University of South Alabama, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether bacterial urinary tract infection triggers amyloid-beta to accumulate in the kidney, and whether this tracks with bacterial burden, using a mouse UTI model.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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