Taking on Antibiotic Resistance

Tell us about the research you conducted as a graduate student. What did your studies find?

I investigated the role of the immune system in responding to joint arthroplasty failure in patients who have artificial knees or hips.

Failure of an artificial joint can be caused by infection, often associated with bacterial biofilm growth, or by non-infectious means, such as instability or aseptic loosening. While assays exist to detect and identify the presence of microbes, the tests can be negative, making it challenging to determine if a patient has an infection. When a diagnosis is ambiguous, patients may receive unnecessarily broad-spectrum — or wholly unneeded — antibiotic treatments. That can contribute to the antibiotic resistance crisis the world is facing and may have harmful effects on patients themselves.

My thesis work aimed to profile the human immune response in artificial joint failure with state-of-the-art approaches: looking at the transcriptome and proteome of the immune cells. The goal is to limit the use of unnecessary antimicrobial treatments and inform the use of novel therapeutics and diagnostics. In the future, Dr. Patel’s research team aims to use these findings and others to develop futuristic combinational multi-omics approaches to assess immunological responses and illuminate causes of arthroplasty failure and other infectious diseases.

What opportunities did you take advantage of during graduate school to further your leadership skills and your career path?

I was involved with student government, first as the Graduate School Association’s immunology track representative and later as a co-president. I also served as the school’s student representative on the board of directors of the Mayo Clinic Alumni Association. In addition, I was involved in mentoring and scientific community outreach as a STEM mentor and an elected board member of Oraculi, a nonprofit organization that connects young professionals with middle and high school students in Rochester, Minnesota, to foster the development of aspiring scientists.

What's next?

I’ve grown increasingly interested in using my scientific and leadership training to pursue in a career in science policy at the federal level. I’ve grown increasingly interested in using my scientific and leadership training to pursue in a career in science policy at the federal level. Excitingly, I recently accepted a science policy fellowship at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., where I will be working on the National Plan to Combat Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned at Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences to help inform these important objectives.