Madison Collins
Montana State University, MT·Microbiology & Immunology
Staphylococcus aureus is a common bacterium that causes everything from skin infections to deadly flesh-eating infections (necrotizing fasciitis) and bloodstream infections (septicemia). Since the 1940s it has grown increasingly resistant to antibiotics, so new treatments are needed.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Staphylococcus aureus
S. aureus
SaeR/S
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2030
What they work on
- 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.
- Compare human neutrophils that have swallowed wild-type S. aureus or a mutant lacking SaeR/S, building on RNAseq gene expression data, to define the host autophagy pathways the bacterium alters.
- Identify the bacterial and host mechanisms that let S. aureus escape neutrophil killing, as a basis for finding new therapeutic targets against drug-resistant infections.
More about the research
A central question is how S. aureus escapes neutrophils. Neutrophils are the white blood cells that swallow and kill bacteria, and they are the body's most important defense for clearing infections.
Why it matters
Drug-resistant S. aureus causes skin, soft-tissue and life-threatening invasive infections, and antibiotics work less well against it. This project aims to pin down how the bacterium's SaeR/S system blocks neutrophils from destroying it through autophagy. That knowledge could point to new targets for treatments that help the immune system clear S. aureus infections.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Masanori Matsumoto
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Use a new atopic dermatitis-like mouse model, with S. aureus applied to the skin, to test whether the Agr quorum-sensing system drives skin inflammation by causing keratinocytes to release alarmin danger signals.
Caitlyn Holmes
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
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.
Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how S. aureus alpha-toxin (Hla) impairs antigen-specific CD4+ T cells in skin infection, examining antigen trafficking, T-cell receptor signaling during infection, and whether T-cell ADAM10 levels predict susceptibility, using cell-type-specific transgenic mice and a human biorepository.
The school
Montana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $258M a year on research, 85 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.