Research

Current Projects

Association between microbiome composition and chronic wound healing

Chronic wounds are colonized by complex microbial communities (microbiomes) that can lead to infection, hospitalization, limb amputation, and even death. In this project, we examine how microbiomes affect chronic wound healing. We use next generation sequencing to perform microbial profiling on samples collected from patients with chronic wounds. 

The goal of this study is to understand how specific microbiome compositions contribute to the inhibition of chronic wound healing and to find bacterial predictors of the wound-healing outcome.

Novel Antimicrobial Peptides (AMPs) with potent antibiofilm efficacy

We are developing bacterial AMPs as a novel weapon against biofilm infections. We have characterized a variety of novel synthetic AMPs and our results have shown that these AMPs exhibit excellent in vitro bactericidal activity against both planktonic cultures and biofilms of multiple bacterial species, including those isolated from chronic wounds. Furthermore, these AMPs show remarkable stability and safety hence, they are promising novel antibiofilm peptides with broad potential for clinical application.

The goal of this study is to determine in vivo efficacy of the novel AMPs on biofilms of clinical bacterial isolates, thus providing the preclinical data needed for future clinical