Successful Clinical Response In Pneumonia Therapy NIH Resarch program number: 5U19AI135964-02

Hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is the leading causes of death from nosocomial infection, with high rates of associated morbidity. HAP due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter spp. is substantially more difficult to treat than other pathogens, with clinical failure rates as high as 50%. These rates persist despite optimization of antibiotic regimens, suggesting factors beyond antibiotic resistance contribute to the persistent morbidity and mortality. In this Project, we will focus on the host response to pneumonia. We hypothesize that persistent inflammation in the alveolus after appropriate antibiotic treatment contributes to clinical failure in patients with P. aeruginosa or Acinetobacter spp. pneumonia.

Project 1 will deploy robust tools for flow sorting macrophage and lymphocyte subset populations, isolating RNA from these populations, and performing transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis to compare successful and unsuccessful host responses to infection.