Shankar Thangamani
Purdue University, IN·Microbiology & Immunology
Some microbes live quietly on human skin for months without causing symptoms, then spread from person to person in hospitals and turn deadly once they reach the bloodstream. Candida auris is one of them: a yeast that prefers skin, moves easily between hospitalized patients and nursing home residents, and resists most available antifungal drugs.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
- Topics
Candida auris
fungal pathogen
antifungal resistance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Determine how resident skin bacteria and other skin microbiota directly inhibit the growth and skin colonization of Candida auris, a drug-resistant yeast that spreads between hospitalized patients.
- Define the host-mediated routes through which skin microbiota control Candida auris colonization, separating effects on the host's own responses from direct microbe-on-fungus suppression.
- Map which microbiota- and host-derived factors regulate prolonged, symptom-free skin colonization, the step that precedes patient-to-patient spread and invasive bloodstream infection.
- Use the mechanisms identified to nominate antifungal therapeutic strategies aimed at preventing skin colonization, given that most Candida auris isolates resist azole, polyene, and echinocandin drugs.
More about the research
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists it as an urgent threat. Death rates among patients with invasive infections run from 40 to 60 percent, and most isolates resist all three approved classes of antifungal drugs, so blocking skin colonization before infection starts is an attractive alternative to killing the fungus with drugs.
Why it matters
Candida auris spreads through hospitals and long-term care facilities and causes bloodstream infections that kill a large share of the patients who get them, with few drug options left. Identifying the microbial and host factors that keep the fungus off skin could support new ways to prevent colonization, interrupt outbreaks, and protect patients who depend on catheters and other indwelling devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Micah McClain
Duke University, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Track how the blood immune response changes over the course of invasive candidiasis, using bulk RNA-sequencing of serial whole-blood samples from three existing patient biobanks.
Muhammad Zafar
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine the distinct roles of the two genetically separate ethanolamine utilization (eut) gene clusters of Klebsiella pneumoniae in using ethanolamine, a membrane and diet byproduct, as a nutrient in the mouse gut.
Karen Norris
University of Georgia, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether the NXT-2 vaccine, a lab-made peptide based on a fungal protein shared across species, triggers strong immune responses in nonhuman primates.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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