Postdoc Appreciation Week 2022 (UCL DoM)

Acinetobacter baumannii is a serious opportunistic pathogen, especially in Asian low- and middle-class income countries. Typically causing ventilator-associated pneumonia, A. baumannii harbours a myriad of antimicrobial resistance mechanisms causing high rates of morbidity and mortality. To help overcome the high levels of antibiotic resistant A. baumannii infections, Samantha aims to develop a novel antibody therapy targeting conserved protein antigens. She will discuss her findings demonstrating the in vitro and in vivo protective efficacy of a new antibody against clinical A. baumannii.

Mucous is an essential hydrating fluid found right from snails to whales. It is involved as a first line of immune defence for trapping invasive pathogens and foreign particles in lungs, evolving from primitive corals. However, aberrated addition of sialic acids to mucins has proven to cause detrimental immunogenic chaos via engagement with SIA specific cell surface receptors. A common example is MUC1 carrying sialylated core-1, O-linked T antigen (MUC1-ST) and its engagement with SIGLEC9. Our main aim is to study function role of SIGLEC9 in epithelial repair.