Caroline Zellmer

Department of Medicine

Caroline Zellmer is a PhD student based at the Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease. Her doctoral work is in collaboration with academic and industry partners and focuses on using genomics and applied microbiology to develop and characterise novel therapeutics for one of the most antimicrobial resistant pathogens: Klebsiella. Prior to matriculating to Cambridge, Caroline developed treatments for malnutrition and diarrhoeal diseases at OpenBiome, and was a Research Affiliate and Visiting Lecturer at MIT. She received her BSc in Microbiology and Public Health with Honours at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a graduate certificate from the Institut Pasteur. Before joining OpenBiome/MIT, Caroline conducted emerging infectious diseases research at the US NIH.

Despite an unmitigated antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis, we lack new therapeutics. Klebsiella in particular is amongst the most concerning and burdensome AMR pathogens globally. To better interrogate new antimicrobials against Klebsiella, my collaborators and I developed and validated novel, high throughput phenotyping assays, which facilitate an improved way to characterize therapeutic functionality compared to existing alternatives. Additionally, I discovered that several novel antimicrobials are effective against a broad range of representative clinical isolates. These assays, which can be applied to other pathogens and therapeutics, will be made publicly available in my two forthcoming first author papers.