Kaitlin Winter

One of the most urgent crises of this century is the rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We are rapidly heading towards a post-antibiotic era, in which treatable infections would once again be able to kill. Antibiotic-resistant infections are on track to cause ~10 million deaths annually by 2050. A currently underutilized tool to address AMR is vaccination. For my Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Vaccine Evaluation Center at the BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, I am working Dr. Manish Sadarangani’s laboratory. I am running the Klebsiella pneumoniae research program. K. pneumoniae is on the World Health Organization’s Priority 1: Critical Pathogen List for the Development of New Antibiotics. Our research program seeks to develop a novel vaccine candidate targeting K. pneumoniae. We have projects covering molecular microbiology, vaccine development, mouse immunology, and human immunology. I am currently supervising two graduate students and a co-op undergraduate student on the research program.