Debra Smith

 Debra Smith is a Research Associate in work-stream 2 “network for clinical infection diagnostics”.  Working under the direction of the work-stream leads Shiranee Sriskandan and Kathy Bamford she is helping develop novel diagnostic tools best suited to detect nosocomial pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Clostridium difficile.

This is being done by conducting fundamental research on the proteomes of the most clinically relevant (and prevalent) S. aureus and C. difficile strains to determine the most abundant bacterial exoproteins produced in broth culture, culture in non-immune blood, and in vivo, including samples from patients. Previous work has shown that the most abundant proteins are often not those which are involved in virulence, yet are, nonetheless, species-specific.

The relevant strains will be chosen by the Imperial College Healthcare Trust diagnostic labs, lead by Kathy Bamford and by collaborators within the Health Protection Agency laboratories.  Once the 20 most abundant and prevalent exoproteins from each species have been identified for S. aureus and C. difficile, antibodies will then be raised against C-terminal residues of these target proteins or against recombinant polypeptides that represent the target proteins.

The antibodies will be characterised for specificity for the target bacterial exoproteins in broth culture, blood, and in vivo. The antibodies with proven specificity will then be used to detect and quantitate the presence of nosocomial pathogens in a clinical samples (i.e. tissue, blood, and secretions), blood cultures and broth subcultures of clinical isolates. If successful, these technologies will be developed into more clinically useful tests.  Any such novel technologies will then be used as case studies in work-stream 4 “embedding infection prevention within NHS organisations: innovation adoption and behaviour change”

Background

Debra joins us from a post as Research Project Leader / Senior Molecular Biologist at Blaze Venture Technologies, based at University of Strathclyde.  In this role she worked with S. aureus bacteriophage to develop a rapid screening system for MRSA.

Prior to this she completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge where she devised a system to identify novel regulators of quorum sensing (bacterial cell to cell communication) in the plant pathogen Erwinia carotovora. She also spent time working in a veterinary diagnostics lab and in laboratory sales.