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Our inoculum effect manuscript in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy highlighted in BIDMC news release.
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Winogradsky column and examples of soil bacterial from visiting exhibit on microbial life at Harvard Museum of Natural History. Great exhibit!
 Reflections on bacterial pestilence in pre-antibiotic era.
Displayed at Harvard University Art Museums Superbugs: An Arms Race Against Bacteria by William Hall, Anthony McDonnell and Jim O'Neill6/15/2018  "But it must be said that we have failed in controlling antimicrobial resistance whenever a physician has to make a choice between a safe drug that might not work and a dangerous but effective one."
Kat had a very productive undergraduate experience in the laboratory while attending Boston University as an undergraduate. Her first author manuscript titled: "Evaluation of Apramycin Activity Against Methicillin-Resistant, Methicillin-Sensitive, and Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus Clinical Isolates" was just accepted into Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, more commonly referred to as DMID. Congratulations! She found that apramycin was equally active against MSSA, MRSA, and VISA strains, and demonstrated rapid time-kill kinetics. This manuscript expands apramycin's known activity spectrum to include contemporaneous human clinical strains of multidrug-resistant carbapenem=resistant Enterobacteriaceae = CRE; Acinetobacter baumannii, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and now Staphylococcus aureus.
We are very excited for Kat as she is moving this summer to the University of Chicago to work on a much beloved organism, Legionella pneumophila, in Howard Shuman's laboratory. "The Inoculum Effect in the Era of Multidrug Resistance: Minor Differences in Inoculum Have Dramatic Effect on Minimal Inhibitory Concentration Determination."
The manuscript describes use of D300-based inkjet printing technology to investigate the inoculum effect with a resolution not previously possible. The inoculum effect is the general observation that the minimal inhibitor concentration (in other words level of resistance) of an organism to an antibiotic increases when a higher density of organisms is tested. This is effect is especially prominent for beta-lactam antiibiotics. It is of potential clinical concern during some types of infections when the organism burden is high. Here we explored whether subtle differences in inoculum within the range allowed by current standards can effect the susceptibility testing results that clinical laboratories obtain and provide to clinicians. Our findings for organisms with certain types of multidrug-resistance and very important classes of antibiotics was that these small allowable differences in inoculum could change the MIC determinations and the determination of whether organisms were susceptible or resistant to the antibiotics tested. Interview by science and technology writer, Marc Landas. "CONVERSATIONS WITH JAMES KIRBY: TRAINING AI FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE DIAGNOSTICS"
We are delighted to welcome our newest laboratory member. Matthew comes with an extensive engineering and systems background and will bring new expertise to the lab!
KP Smith wins an "Outstanding Abstract Award" otherwise known as the OAA, for his experimental work on the inoculum effect.
The award description on the ASM Microbe 2018 awards website: "Sponsored by ASM and determined by the ASM Microbe Program Committee, these awards highlight outstanding abstracts presented by students, residents, or medical/clinical fellows. All abstracts submitted by the deadline will be considered for these awards. Awards will include a cash prize of $200."  Staining with LAMP-1, a lysosomal marker  Green fluorescent latex beads  Merged image. Note latex beads are surrounded by LAMP-1 and are therefore in lysosomal compartments. Far-Red staining of LAMP-1 reduces amount of background autofluorescence |
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