Our Mission: Innovating to Protect Humanity from the Global Threat of Antimicrobial Resistance: Integrating Solutions Across Human and Veterinary Medicine, Stewardship, and Awareness
UN Meeting Highlights Antimicrobial Resistance “Epiphany”—Lack of Antibiotic Access Is a Key Driver
Our April 24th Levy CIMAR Science Seminar will explore C. difficile from both clinical and basic science perspectives. We will hear from two speakers this month: Tufts Medical Center’s Majd (Soubani) Alsoubani, MD, MPH, an Attending Physician with expertise in antimicrobial stewardship and infections in immunocompromised hosts, and Greg Harrison, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of CIMAR’s Aimee Shen, PhD, studying the molecular machinery that is required for cell division in C. diff and working to identify novel therapeutic targets to combat this dangerous pathogen.
Please join us on Thursday, April 24th, at 12 noon in M&V 412 (4th floor, M&V Building, 136 Harrison Ave., Boston) and by Zoom (details to come).
Dr. Alsoubani will present on “Evaluating the role of Clostridioides difficile clades and ribotypes on clinical outcomes and response to treatment.“ The talk will include data on the impact of C. difficile strains on clinical outcomes.
Dr. Harrison will present on “Defining the essential role of PBP1 in the non-canonical divisome of Clostridioides difficile.” C. difficile carries out the essential process of cell division using a mechanism that is fundamentally different from previously studied bacteria, so this pathway could be a source of new species-specific therapeutic targets. This talk will explore Dr. Harrison’s work on understanding the molecular details of cell division in C. difficile, including the critical role of the enzyme PBP1.
Please Join us for a Levy CIMAR seminar from Fatima Aysha Hussain, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Biology at Tufts studying the ecology and evolution of the vaginal microbiome. Dr. Hussain will present on “Designing Microbial Therapeutics for Vaginal Health” on May 29th at 12 noon in M&V 412 and by Zoom (details to come).
Dr. Hussain is interested in microbe-microbe interactions and phage-driven evolution of bacteria. She and her lab investigate how phages drive evolution of resistance in their hosts, how bacteriocins and other antimicrobial compounds shape the bacterial community, and how phage therapy might be leveraged in this ecosystem to treat microbial syndromes such as bacterial vaginosis. Dr. Hussain and team aim to use their work to design ecologically-informed microbial therapeutics for women’s health.
Previously, Dr. Hussain focused on clinical applications of this work—investigating the potential of newly-designed probiotics and vaginal microbiota transplantations to treat recurrent bacterial vaginosis.
You can learn more about Dr. Hussain and her lab via her website.
As a healthcare epidemiologist, my work is done in the background, largely unseen. That’s why, when policy and funding decisions have the potential to affect patient safety, I work with @SHEA_Epi as an advocate to make our perspective heard. Here’s to more of that in 2025!
We are thrilled to host @Yale computational biologist C. Brandon Ogbunu, PhD (@big_data_kane) for the 2025 @tuftsmicrodei, @TuftsGSBS, & Levy CIMAR Black History Month talk on 2/27! He will present on "The Panorama: Lessons for Epidemiology, Evolution, and a Science in Peril" 1/2
Our Values
The Levy CIMAR is committed to a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion both within our organization and for all people who are impacted by our work. We strive for health equity for people from all backgrounds and identities, and we actively support societal and institutional structures that promote justice and equality. We are also committed to being a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for our trainees, staff, faculty, affiliates, and partners. One Health acknowledges the interconnectedness of all humans, along with animals and our environments. Antimicrobial resistance impacts us all.