Monday, November 7, at 12:10 p.m. in Todd 334
The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering is hosting a seminar presented by Robin Patel, M.D., Director of Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Robin Patel, M.D., is the director of the Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory. In the research laboratory, she and her colleagues focus on biofilms. Biofilms cause a large number of infections in modern clinical practice, such as prosthetic joint infection and endocarditis.
Dr. Patel 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 infections. Her group uses in vitro studies as well as animal models of infection for their studies.
Dr. Patel is also the chair of the Division of Clinical Microbiology and the director of its Bacteriology Laboratory. In this state-of-the-art clinical facility, she and her colleagues develop and deploy cutting-edge assays for clinical detection of bacteria, identification of bacteria, and characterization of antimicrobial resistance and susceptibility. Most bacterial infections seen in modern clinical practice are associated with bacterial biofilms. Examples of biofilm-associated infections include prosthetic joint infection and endocarditis. These infections can be challenging to treat because in biofilms, bacteria are relatively resistant to host immune responses and traditional antibiotics. In the research laboratory, Dr. Patel and her collaborators are developing new and improved diagnostic tools and treatment strategies for biofilm-associated infections. In the Bacteriology Laboratory, Dr. Patel and her colleagues aim to offer state-of-the-art assays for clinical detection of bacteria, identification of bacteria, and characterization of antimicrobial resistance and susceptibility. In the laboratory itself, they develop many of the bacteriology assays offered for patient care at Mayo Clinic, providing the most technologically and clinically relevant diagnostics possible.
New Technologies for the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory
In this seminar, Dr. Patel will overview new and emerging rapid diagnostic methods in clinical bacteriology. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry is a proteomic method which allows rapid identification of bacteria grown in culture; this technique has revolutionized fast and accurate microbial identification. Dr. Patel will share her experience with this technology, including its application to the early identification of bacteria grown from positive blood culture bottles. She will discuss advances in laboratory automation germane to clinical bacteriology. Rapid panel-based molecular diagnostics, now available for detection of bacteria in positive blood culture bottles, gastrointestinal pathogens present in stool, viral and bacterial pathogens present in respiratory specimens and causes of acute central nervous infection present in cerebrospinal fluid, will be presented. Methods for rapid phenotypic and genotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing will also be summarized. Finally, rapid point-of-care molecular microbiology diagnostics will be covered.
