Summary
I am a clinician scientist with a research focus on molecular bacteriology, sepsis and septic shock. I trained in medicine (qualified 2010) and specialised in critical/intensive care, rotating through London hospitals until 2022.
I have completed Academic Foundation Training (2 years), an NIHR-funded Academic Clinical Fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine (3 years) and an MRC-funded Clinical Research Training Fellowship and PhD (4 years) at the Centre for Molecular Biology and Infection at Imperial College London.
My work aims to elucidate the pathogenesis and evaluate novel treatment strategies for severe infection caused by hospital-acquired organisms. I use my multidisciplinary background to bridge basic science (molecular bacterial genetics) and the evaluation of future therapeutics and vaccine candidates (translational pharmacology). One key goal is to apply a high-fidelity bench-to-bedside approach to in vivo modelling so that our assessment of novel candidates is thorough, robust and translatable from the preclinical arena.
Work has focussed on the prototypical multidrug resistant hospital-acquired organism Klebsiella pneumoniae using a fibreoptic-intubation murine model that results in severe pneumonia, bacteraemia and organ dysfunction.
I currently collaborate on a large translational pharmacology project with GSK at both Siena and Stevenage sites.
Publications
Journals
Di Pilato V, Codda G, Niccolai C, et al., 2024, Functional features of KPC-109, a novel 270-loop KPC-3 mutant mediating resistance to avibactam-based β-lactamase inhibitor combinations and cefiderocol., Int J Antimicrob Agents, Vol:63
Frankel G, David S, Low WW, et al., 2023, Plasmids pick a bacterial partner before committing to conjugation, Nucleic Acids Research, Vol:51, ISSN:0305-1048, Pages:8925-8933
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