Profile

‘Superbug’ refers to pathogens (e.g. bacteria) that are resistant to multiple antibiotics. Patients infected with the hospital superbug Clostridium difficile (C. Diff) develop severe diarrhoea, with some people having to go the toilet 20 times in one day! This obviously isn’t much fun for these people!

My work involves looking at blood and faeces from these people with C. Diff and comparing it to people who don’t have the disease to see if we can identify any differences. For example,  I try to identify genetic differences by extracting DNA from our patients’ blood and using the DNA in my experiments.

Any findings may then potentially help in the treatment/management of the disease

Every day is different – that’s one good thing about it; some days will be mad busy with experiments and others are more relaxed planning and writing up what I’ve done – it’s a nice mix

I usually start the day by checking emails and replying to any important ones – usually from my boss!

I usually then head to lab and begin my experiment for that day – my most recent lab work involves measuring patient antibody levels to the toxin which causes the disease I work on (C. Diff). We would assume that a patient with severe disease will have less antibodies compared to a patient with milder disease.

This experiment takes around 7 hours but involves a lot of gaps – so I’d prepare my samples and add them into my ‘plates’ and then I have to leave them for 2 hours. Then I come back and add my next reagent and this incubates for 1 hour and so on. I usually use these gaps to plan other lab work, write up what I have done that day and have lunch!

I obtain my results for the day’s experiment late afternoon ~3-4pm (fingers crossed it works!). Based on the results I can then plan the next day’s work

Lab work generates results and it’s these results that have enabled me to travel to Munich, Germany and New York, USA to present my work at international conferences.