Current work

Adult CF-CRS project

This project is part of an ongoing collaboration between Jennifer Bomberger, PhD (Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth) and Vaughn Cooper (Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of Pittsburgh). The main aim of the project is to identify changes to the airway microbiome in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) induced by viral-bacterial co-infection. Through interrogation of our unique collection of clinical specimens and patient metadata we also hope to identify important changes in the microbial community of the CF lung and sinuses in the era of highly effective modulator therapy. These data will be particularly important as we continue to observe the effects of modulator therapies and develop novel methods for pathogen surveillance in patients that are likely to be healthier and, therefore, require fewer hospital visits.

In vitro modeling of polymicrobial communities in the CF airways

As part of an ongoing collaboration between Jennifer Bomberger, PhD (Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth), Joanna Goldberg, PhD (Emory University School of Medicine), and Marvin Whiteley, PhD (Georgia Institute of Technology) we are working to develop an in vitro model to accurately recapitulate the multi-species communities in the CF airway. By utilizing transcriptomic data from CF sputum samples we can quantify the ability of given models to reproduce the growth conditions experienced by bacteria existing in the CF airway (doi: 10.1073/pnas.2221542120).

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