Juliane Bubeck Wardenburg
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology
Some bacteria do more than make people sick — they actively interfere with the immune memory that would prevent the next infection. That is a central puzzle for Staphylococcus aureus, a common and often drug-resistant bacterium that causes skin, bloodstream and deep-tissue infections in otherwise healthy adults and children, and that people catch again and again.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
- Topics
Staphylococcus aureus
alpha-toxin
Hla
- Grants
- 4 known grants, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Determine how S. aureus alpha-toxin (Hla) impairs antigen-specific CD4+ T cells in skin infection, examining antigen trafficking, T-cell receptor signaling during infection, and whether T-cell ADAM10 levels predict susceptibility, using cell-type-specific transgenic mice and a human biorepository.
- Map the spatial and temporal course of neutrophil–endothelial interactions early in S. aureus infection across distinct tissues, testing how the Hla receptor ADAM10 shapes endothelial injury and platelet–neutrophil clustering, with in vivo imaging and transgenic mouse lines.
- Profile the developing human T-cell response to S. aureus using mass cytometry (CyTOF), which reads many markers per single cell, comparing healthy infants and young children with patients who have local or invasive infection.
- Measure antibody responses to a panel of S. aureus virulence factors by multiplex assay across childhood to test whether specific serologic responses, including anti-Hla titers, serve as correlates of protection against recurrent disease.
- Identify the protein target of Bcf1, a toxin made only by carbapenem-resistant clade II Bacteroides fragilis, and test the hypothesis that it works by limiting competitors' nutrient access, using engineered bacterial genetic variants in vitro.
- Test whether Bcf1 is required for clade II B. fragilis to outcompete clade I strains in the colon, using a mouse model of colonic colonization and a model of vertical transmission in young mice.
More about the research
Decades of vaccine attempts have failed in clinical trials, in part because no one knew which immune responses actually protect humans. Research here follows one bacterial weapon, alpha-toxin (also called Hla), from its receptor on host cells through its effects on immune cells, and tracks how children's immune systems respond to the bacterium in real life. A separate line of work examines a different gut bacterium that acts as a reservoir for antibiotic resistance.
Why it matters
Drug-resistant S. aureus is a leading cause of infection worldwide, and no vaccine exists; defining which human immune responses actually protect, and how the bacterium's alpha-toxin disables T cells and neutrophils, could guide vaccine antigen choice or short-term drugs against the toxin's receptor ADAM10. Understanding how carbapenem-resistant B. fragilis holds its place in the infant gut could suggest probiotic or ecological strategies to limit the spread of metallo-beta-lactamase resistance.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Danielle Alfano
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Determine the molecular mechanisms by which diverse live pathogens activate endothelial ADAM10, the cell-surface protein that acts as the S. aureus alpha-toxin receptor, using unique mouse lines.
Madison Collins
Montana State University, MT·Microbiology & Immunology
Test the hypothesis that molecules controlled by the S. aureus SaeR/S gene regulatory system disrupt autophagy, a self-digestion process that kills trapped microbes, in human neutrophils after they swallow the bacteria.
Lilly Immergluck
Morehouse School of Medicine, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Apply association mining to antibiotic resistance phenotypes of community-onset Staphylococcus aureus from children to identify which resistance patterns co-occur and how multidrug-resistant profiles have changed over two decades.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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