Infections have been playing a pivotal role in causing various diseases in the history of human population and still remain the second leading cause of deaths worldwide till today. In spite of having increased knowledge about causative agents of many infectious diseases, we are far behind from controlling many of these infectious diseases and in the development of an efficient vaccine. Though antibiotics have been used to control bacterial infections, many bacteria have developed resistance to most of the known antibiotics. Antibiotic resistance has become a major threat to global public health and major issue in medicine.
At present, my lab is focused on better understanding of antibiotic resistance in a range of resistant bacteria, particularly Gram-negative organisms such as Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae (Enterobacteriaceae) and non-fermentors such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Actinetobacter baumannii, aiming to identify novel therapeutics to prevent infections caused by these drug resistant pathogens.In addition, my lab is also working on molecular characterization of drug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MDR & XDR) isolates and the association of specific mutations conferring drug resistance with strains of different genotypes. While my expertise is in molecular microbiology, I work in close association with clinical microbiologist, chemists and structural biologist. Presently I have been involved in handling 2 research projects supported by Dept. of Science and Technology (DST). |