Summary
I am an intensive care physician with a unifying clinical and academic focus in studying the interplay between antimicrobial resistance and severe lung infections in the critically unwell population. I study these interactions using the WHO Class 1 priority pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae, which typifies a successful modern pathogen and presents an enormous global healthcare challenge. It is frequently resistant to many last-line antibiotic agents including carbapenems, causes profound disease with significant mortality and is common and prevalent in low- middle- and high-income countries.
My work centres on the molecular mechanisms conferring carbapenem resistance and the subsequent impact on virulence in translational models. Drug entry into Klebsiella pneumoniae is mediated by key outer membrane proteins (OmpK35 and OmpK36) which have been modified in clinically important hospital adapted Klebsiella pneumoniae clones. Using a variety of molecular techniques, we model the changes that have occurred in the strains responsible for the dissemination of carbapenem resistance and treatment failure.
I am a speciality trainee (ST6) in Intensive Care Medicine. Having completed Academic Foundation training I came to Professor Gad Frankel’s laboratory (MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology, Department of Life Sciences) on an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship (2015-2018). In 2019, I was awarded an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to continue this work. My PhD is co-supervised by Professor Stephen Brett and Dr Abigail Clements.
Publications
Journals
Wong J, David S, Sanchez Garrido J, et al., 2022, Recurrent emergence of Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenem resistance mediated by an inhibitory ompK36 mRNA secondary structure, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of Usa, Vol:119, ISSN:0027-8424, Pages:1-12
David S, Wong JLC, Sanchez-Garrido J, et al., 2022, Widespread emergence of OmpK36 loop 3 insertions among multidrug-resistant clones of Klebsiella pneumoniae., Plos Pathogens, Vol:18, ISSN:1553-7366, Pages:1-23
Low WW, Wong J, Beltran L, et al., 2022, Mating pair stabilization mediates bacterial conjugation species specificity, Nature Microbiology, Vol:7, ISSN:2058-5276, Pages:1016-1027
Stephens J, Wong J, Broomhead R, et al., 2021, Raised serum amylase in patients with COVID-19 may not be associated with pancreatitis, British Journal of Surgery, Vol:108, ISSN:0007-1323, Pages:152-153
Zheng W, Pena A, Low WW, et al., 2020, Cryoelectron-Microscopic Structure of the pKpQIL Conjugative Pili from Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, Structure, Vol:28, ISSN:0969-2126, Pages:1321-+