Please join us for this month’s Levy CIMAR Science Talk from our own Shira Doron, MD, who among her many titles is Chief Infection Control Officer for Tufts Medicine where she oversees Infection Control and Antimicrobial Stewardship. She is also the chair of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence Subcommittee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and serves as a consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health Antimicrobial Resistance Program. Dr. Doron will present on “Diagnostic Stewardship as a Tool for Antimicrobial Stewardship” on Thursday, October 26th, at 12 noon.
Antimicrobial misuse and overuse are known problems in patient care, resulting in the rising prevalence of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) pathogens. Antimicrobial stewardship is a collection of clinical practices designed to turn the tide against AMR. Diagnostic stewardship is just one of these practices and entails ordering appropriate tests for individual patients at the right time, improving clinical care. Dr. Doron leads antimicrobial stewardship efforts including diagnostic stewardship efforts for Tufts Medicine. You can learn more about her work here and more about TMC’s antimicrobial stewardship services here.
Past Events:
We are excited to announce our first seminar speaker for the 2023-2024 academic year, Professor Alan F. Cowman, who among his many roles is acting Director of Australia’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). An internationally acclaimed expert in malaria research, Prof. Cowman heads a laboratory at WEHI where he and his team aim to advance the understanding of how malaria-causing parasites invade human cells. The seminar—Discovery and Development of Novel Antimalarials and Their Use as Chemical Tools to Discover New Biology of the Malaria Parasite—will take place on Thursday, September 28th, at 12 noon both via Zoom and in person. Details to come. This talk is jointly sponsored by the Levy CIMAR, the TUSM Global Health Faculty Council, and the Tufts Center for Global Public Health.
Prof. Cowman and his lab study Plasmodium falciparum and other Plasmodium spp. to determine how they infect humans and cause disease. The team collaborate with the Merck pharmaceutical company to develop novel antimalarials, and this academic/industrial collaboration has resulted in development of a clinical candidate that is now in first-in-human clinical trials.
You can learn more about Dr. Cowman and the Cowman Lab here.
We are pleased to welcome Massachusetts General Hospital’s Roby Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD, to present for our May 25th Levy CIMAR Science Lunch, our last seminar of the ’22-’23 season! Dr. Bhattacharyya is an Assistant Professor in the Infectious Diseases Division at MGH as well as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. He will present on “Transcriptional Profiling for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Discovery” at 12 noon both in-person and via Zoom.
Dr. Bhattacharyya maintains a lab at the Broad where he and his team pursue basic and translational research on pathogenic microbes, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance and transcriptional responses to antibiotic exposure, and on characterizing their impact on infected patients, including the immune responses elicited upon systemic infection such as sepsis or COVID-19.
You can learn more about Dr. Bhattacharyya and the Bhattacharyya Lab’s work at https://www.bhattacharyyalab.org.
Please join us on Thursday, April 27th, at noon for a seminar from Sankha (Bobby) Basu, MD, PhD, Director of Clinical Microbiology at Tufts Medical Center. Dr. Basu’s research interests include the development of novel mass spectrometry approaches, including diagnostic applications in infectious disease.
Dr. Basu earned his MD and PhD from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and completed both his clinical pathology residency and microbiology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Articles on Our Past Events:
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Discovery and Development of Novel Antimalarials and Their Use as Chemical Tools to Discover New Biology of the Malaria Parasite – WEHI’s Professor Alan F. Cowman
Prof. Alan F. Cowman heads a laboratory at WEHI where he and his team aim to advance the understanding of how malaria-causing parasites invade human cells. The seminar, "Discovery and Development of Novel Antimalarials and Their Use as Chemical Tools to Discover New Biology of the Malaria Parasite," was jointly sponsored by the Levy CIMAR, the TUSM Global Health Faculty
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Transcriptional Profiling for Infectious Disease Diagnostics and Discovery – Massachusetts General Hospital’s Roby Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD
Roby Bhattacharyya, MD, PhD, maintains a lab at the Broad where he and his team pursue basic and translational research on pathogenic microbes, with a particular focus on antimicrobial resistance and transcriptional responses to antibiotic exposure, and on characterizing their impact on infected patients, including the immune responses elicited upon systemic infection such as sepsis or COVID-19. For today's seminar,
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Superbugs From Their Backyards and Beyond: Brockton High Schoolers Present “Tiny Earth” Findings to Levy CIMAR; Tufts Community
CIMAR hosted 33 students from Boston-area Brockton High School last week for a rare educational and networking opportunity. Students presented posters depicting original experiments and data on antimicrobial resistance to a wide audience of Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center members.
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Engineering Phages as Novel Antimicrobials Targeting Gram-Negative Pathogens – Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bryan Lenneman, Ph.D.
MGH Research Fellow Bryan Lenneman, PhD, is interested in utilizing synthetic biology to develop novel therapeutics against diseases associated with dysbiosis of the human gut microbial community.
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Metabolic Modeling Predicts Unique Drug Targets in Lyme Disease Pathogen B. burgdorferi – TUSM’s Peter Gwynne, PhD
Lyme disease expert Peter Gwynne, PhD, presented on “Metabolic Modeling Predicts Unique Drug Targets in the Lyme Disease Pathogen Borrelia burgdorferi” for the Levy CIMAR's February 2023 Science Seminar. Dr. Gwynne is interested in Borrelia burgdorferi, which causes Lyme disease, and the molecular mechanisms the bacterium uses to transition between different hosts such as ticks, mice, and humans. His research
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One Health Approach to Antimicrobial Stewardship in Companion Animals – Tufts Vet School’s Claire Fellman, D.V.M., Ph.D., DACVIM (SA), DACVCP
Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Claire Fellman, D.V.M., Ph.D., DACVIM (SA), DACVCP is interested in One Health approaches to antimicrobial stewardship in veterinary medicine.
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The Challenge of Antibiotics Stewardship in Low Income Countries: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Congo – Tufts Vet’s Diafuka Saila-Ngita, DVM, MSc, PhD
Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine’s Diafuka Saila-Ngita, DVM, MSc, PhD, is interested in addressing the challenges of antimicrobial stewardship in low-income nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Developing a Mycobacterial Research Agenda – Tufts Medical Center’s Husain Poonawala, MBBS, MPH
Tufts Medical Center’s Husain Poonawala, MBBS, MPH, is interested in tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacteria, how next-generation sequencing and novel diagnostic methods can be integrated into clinical care.
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Antimicrobial Stewardship in Jails and Prisons: When Will Then be Now? – Tufts Medical Center’s Alysse Wurcel, MD, MS
Infections of all kinds—tuberculosis, dental infections, HIV, sexually transmitted infections, COVID-19, and more—are common in jails and prisons, making these facilities places where antibiotics are frequently prescribed. Unfortunately, sometimes antibiotics are prescribed even though they are not clinically indicated, the wrong antibiotics are prescribed, or antibiotics are prescribed for too long. The Levy CIMAR's Alysse G. Wurcel, MD, MS, presented
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Microbial Theranostics: A Resistance Combating Strategy – Mayo Clinic’s Robin Patel, MD
In the research laboratory, Dr. Patel and her colleagues focus on biofilms, which cause a large number of infections in modern clinical practice, such as prosthetic joint infection and endocarditis. She and her team are unraveling the process of biofilm formation and resistance of biofilms to antibiotics. They are developing new and improved diagnostic tools and treatment strategies for biofilm-associated
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How HAMLET, a Human Milk Protein, Kills Bacteria and Reverses Antibiotic Resistance – Lund University’s Anders P. Håkansson, PhD
Did you know that a human breast milk protein complex called HAMLET can help reverse the antibiotic resistance of bacterial species, including penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus? Lund University’s Anders P. Håkansson, PhD, presented on his work with HAMLET today for our first Levy CIMAR Science Lunch of 2022. His talk was titled, “How HAMLET, a Human Milk
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Phage Prophylaxis of Cholera – Tufts University’s Andrew Camilli, PhD
Bacteriophages are viruses that specifically target and kill bacteria, preventing bacterial infections, and Dr. Andrew Camilli and his lab study the bacteriophages that kill V. cholerae. Dr. Camilli is also co-founder and scientific advisor to PhagePro, Inc., a Boston-based startup aiming to use bacteriophages to prevent bacterial infections. With the unmitigated rise of antibiotic resistance and the known negative consequences of
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From Detection to Predicting Infectious Disease and Antibiotic Resistance Outcomes: Employing Experimental Evolution, Omics-Stress Mapping and Computational Biology to Determine and Predict What Matters in Antibiotic Resistance
Tim van Opijnen, PhD, an Associate Professor of Biology at Boston College and an Affiliate member of the Levy CIMAR, presented for our May 2021 Levy CIMAR Science Lunch on his group's work on antimicrobial resistance. His talk was titled, "From Detection to Predicting Infectious Disease and Antibiotic Resistance Outcomes: Employing Experimental Evolution, Omics-Stress Mapping and Computational Biology to Determine
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Monoclonal Ab treatment for SARS CoV2 infection
Veterinary pathologist Amanda J. Martinot (DVM, MPH, PhD) of the Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine presented for our Monthly Science Meeting on Thursday, January 28, on two articles of interest in the COVID-19 pandemic: The first on the pre-clinical results for the Regeneron monoclonal Ab for SARS CoV-2 in hamsters and monkeys (Science), with additional discussion of the
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Trials and Tribulations of Antimicrobial Drug Development: Assessing the Economic and Political Landscape
As an internationally recognized expert on drug development science and policy, the Levy CIMAR's Dr. Kenneth I. Kaitin writes and speaks regularly on factors that contribute to the slow pace and high cost of pharmaceutical R&D and efforts to improve the development process. He has provided public testimony before the U.S. Congress on pharmaceutical development, regulation, and policy issues, and
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Levy CIMAR Promotes One Health, Collaboration Through “Fighting AMR Together” Workshop
The Levy CIMAR hosted our second annual collaborative workshop titled “Fighting AMR Together” earlier this month, offering a platform for investigators and clinicians to showcase their research and promoting opportunities for partnership both within and outside of the Tufts network. The two-day workshop, held Nov. 5-6, 2020, began with welcoming remarks from Levy CIMAR Director Helen Boucher, MD, Senior Leadership
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Dedication of the Stuart B. Levy CIMAR at Tufts
We at the Levy CIMAR are honored to be named for Dr. Stuart B. Levy, whose pioneering work in fighting antibiotic misuse and resistance was a key inspiration behind our Center. During his more than four decades at Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Levy led the paradigm shift in how we view antibiotic use and stewardship. In his
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CIMAR Faculty Support Virtual ‘Mini’ Med School to Engage High Schoolers
Tufts Mini-Med School dovetails with CIMAR’s mission in that it is uniquely interdisciplinary in its One Health approach. The program draws on an array of schools beyond the School of Medicine dedicated to the health science and medicine at Tufts University, including: the School of Dental Medicine, the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, the Friedman School of Nutrition Science &
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CIMAR Outreach Day Provides High Schoolers Rare Educational and Networking Opportunities
CIMAR hosted 33 students from Boston-area Brockton High School last week for a rare educational and networking opportunity. Students presented posters depicting original experiments and data on antimicrobial resistance to a wide audience of Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center members.
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Breaking the Chain of Infection: Tufts@Kendall Event Connects Tufts Researchers and the Biomedical Industry
Tufts and MassBio held the first Tufts@Kendall event, bringing together CIMAR researchers and clinicians with more than 80 members of the biomedical community to discuss the latest advances in infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance at Tufts University.
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Drug-Resistant Superbugs: CIMAR Symposium Examines the Intersection of People, Animals, Food, and the Environment, and Their Impact on Health
The event brought together over 175 clinicians and researchers from academia, medicine, and industry, all interested in fighting drug-resistant diseases via a “One Health” approach. One Health prioritizes the relationship among people, animals, the environment, and the foods we all consume as critical avenues by which drug-resistant bacteria spread from one to another
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CIMAR Joins the Battle Against AMR with Collaborative and Brainstorming Workshop
The Tufts Center for Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance (CIMAR) hosted its first event last month to introduce the Center to the local scientific community and to offer a platform for investigators and clinicians to showcase their research and promote collaborations.