Lopatkin is one of 22 early-career scientists selected nationwide to explore some of the most pressing questions in human health and medicine.
聽鈥�13, an assistant professor of聽, , and at the聽,聽is one of 22 scientists selected to join the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences this year. The program provides early-career scientists four years of funding to explore some of the most pressing questions in human health and medicine.
The funding will help Lopatkin鈥檚 lab explore how changes in bacterial metabolism contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance. She says that decades of antibiotic overuse鈥攊n both clinical and agricultural settings鈥攈ave led to an alarming rise in bacterial strains that are resistant to antibiotics, contributing to a major public health concern.
鈥淐urrently, the study of antibiotic resistance mechanisms focuses mostly on a small handful of highly conserved intracellular targets that reduce antibiotic-target binding,鈥� says Lopatkin. 鈥淗owever, as a postdoctoral fellow, I discovered that many bacteria can also escape the effects of these drugs by amassing widely diverse mutations that interfere with their metabolism.鈥�
Using a suite of sophisticated tools integrating microbiology, biochemistry, and quantitative and computational biology techniques, Lopatkin鈥檚 lab will identify the drug-resistance mutations that arise in bacteria as they adapt to combinations of different antibiotics and metabolism-altering chemicals.
鈥淭hese insights will allow us to determine how microbial metabolism contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance in real-world clinical contexts,鈥� says Lopatkin. 鈥淭his work will facilitate the development of improved diagnostic and prognostic tests for assessing antibiotic susceptibility, as well as novel classes of infection-fighting drugs.鈥�
Lopatkin joins a community of more than 1,000 scientists who have received awards from Pew since 1985. She was chosen from 198 applicants nominated by leading academic institutions and researchers across the United States.
Prior to Lopatkin, the University鈥檚 most recent Pew Scholar in Biological Sciences were (2007), associate professor of biomedical engineering and , and Laura Calvi (2005), the SKAWA Foundation鈥檚 Professor of Medicine in the and Vice Chair for Basic & Translational Science for the .
For a complete list of this year鈥檚 scholars,
