Klebsiella pneumoniae is a Gram-negative, non-motile, encapsulated, lactose-fermenting, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped bacterium. It appears as a mucoid lactose fermenter on MacConkey agar.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's mission is to conduct basic and applied research to better understand, treat, and prevent infectious, immunologic, and allergic diseases.
Community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) refers to pneumonia contracted by a person outside of the healthcare system. In contrast, hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) is seen in patients who have recently visited a hospital or who live in long-term care facilities. CAP is common, affecting people of all ages, and its symptoms occur as a result of oxygen-absorbing areas of the lung (alveoli) filling with fluid. This inhibits lung function, causing dyspnea, fever, chest pains and cough.
An emerging infectious disease (EID) is an infectious disease whose incidence has increased recently, and could increase in the near future. The minority that are capable of developing efficient transmission between humans can become major public and global concerns as potential causes of epidemics or pandemics. Their many impacts can be economic and societal, as well as clinical. EIDs have been increasing steadily since at least 1940.
The AIDS Clinical Trials Group network (ACTG) is one of the largest HIV clinical trials organizations in the world, playing a major role in setting standards of care for HIV infection and opportunistic diseases related to HIV and AIDS in the United States and the developing world. The ACTG is composed of, and directed by, leading clinical scientists in HIV/AIDS therapeutic research. The ACTG is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Harvey James Alter is an American medical researcher, virologist, physician and Nobel Prize laureate, who is best known for his work that led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Alter is the former chief of the infectious disease section and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. In the mid-1970s, Alter and his research team demonstrated that most post-transfusion hepatitis cases were not due to hepatitis A or hepatitis B viruses. Working independently, Alter and Edward Tabor, a scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, proved through transmission studies in chimpanzees that a new form of hepatitis, initially called "non-A, non-B hepatitis" caused the infections, and that the causative agent was probably a virus. This work eventually led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus in 1988, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2020 along with Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice.
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
The Vaccine Research Center (VRC), is an intramural division of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The mission of the VRC is to discover and develop both vaccines and antibody-based products that target infectious diseases.
Robert Palmer Beasley was an American physician, public health educator and epidemiologist whose work on hepatitis B involved extensive investigations in Taiwan. That work established that hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a primary cause of liver cancer and that hepatitis B virus is transmitted from mother to infant during childbirth. Beasley and his colleagues also proved that HBV mother-to-infant transmission is preventable by at-birth vaccination. Due to this work, the World Health Assembly designated HBV as the seventh global vaccine in 1992. He later became the author of HBV immunization policies for the World Health Organization.
Julie Angela Segre is the Chief and Senior Investigator of the Translational and Functional Genomics Branch in the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Lauren V. Wood is an American allergist, immunologist, and staff physician at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, where she has served as a principal investigator. She is known for conducting studies of vaccines for cancer, Human papillomavirus (HPV), Hepatitis C, and HIV especially for use with children, teens and young adults. She holds the rank of captain in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS).
Stephen E. Straus was an American physician, immunologist, virologist and science administrator. He is particularly known for his research into human herpesviruses and chronic fatigue syndrome, and for his discovery of the autoimmune lymphoproliferative syndrome genetic disorder. He headed the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health (NIH), and served as the founding director of the NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Kelly J. Henning is an epidemiologist and medical doctor currently leading the public health program of Bloomberg Philanthropies. She has led the program since it began in 2007. She was the first person to serve as director of epidemiology for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Henning said of working in public health "I have the opportunity to help improve the health and lives of millions of people. That's what really speaks to me."
Arnold Monto is an American physician and epidemiologist. At the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Monto is the Thomas Francis, Jr. Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Public Health, professor emeritus of both epidemiology and global public health, and co-director of the Michigan Center for Respiratory Virus Research & Response. His research focuses on the occurrence, prevention, and treatment of viral respiratory infections in industrialized and developing countries' populations.
Patrizia Farci is an Italian scientist and hepatologist. She is chief of the hepatic pathogenesis section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Farci conducts translational research in the field of liver diseases, particularly in the study of pathogenesis of acute and chronic viral hepatitis. She was previously a full professor of medicine and director of the liver unit and the postgraduate school of gastroenterology at the University of Cagliari.
Eleni Nastouli is a Greek clinical virologist who works at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and Great Ormond Street Hospital. At UCLH, Nastouli leads the Advanced Pathogen Diagnostics Unit, where she develops technologies for genome sequencing as well as studying how viruses are transmitted around hospitals. During the COVID-19 pandemic Nastouli led an investigation into infection rates amongst healthcare workers.
Stephanie Factor is an internist who specializes in infectious diseases and an epidemiologic researcher at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and was an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in the Respiratory Diseases Branch of CDC when she led the field investigations in the Central Asian Republics; medical epidemiologist in the CDC Bioterrorism Preparedness Response Program assigned to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to develop emergency response plans for New York City.
Hilary D. Marston is the Chief Medical Officer of the Food and Drug Administration.
John R. Mascola is an American physician-scientist, immunologist and infectious disease specialist. He was the director of the Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also served as a principal advisor to Anthony Fauci, director of NIAID, on vaccines and biomedical research affairs. Mascola is the current Chief Scientific Officer for ModeX Therapeutics.
Trudy Virginia Noller Murphy is an American pediatric infectious diseases physician, public health epidemiologist and vaccinologist. During the 1980s and 1990s, she conducted research at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, Texas on three bacterial pathogens: Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Murphy's studies advanced understanding of how these organisms spread within communities, particularly among children attending day care centers. Her seminal work on Hib vaccines elucidated the effects of introduction of new Hib vaccines on both bacterial carriage and control of invasive Hib disease. Murphy subsequently joined the National Immunization Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she led multi-disciplinary teams in the Divisions of Epidemiology and Surveillance and The Viral Hepatitis Division. Among her most influential work at CDC was on Rotashield™, which was a newly licensed vaccine designed to prevent severe diarrheal disease caused by rotavirus. Murphy and her colleagues uncovered that the vaccine increased the risk of acute bowel obstruction (intussusception). This finding prompted suspension of the national recommendation to vaccinate children with Rotashield, and led the manufacturer to withdraw the vaccine from the market. For this work Murphy received the United States Department of Health and Human Services Secretary's Award for Distinguished Service in 2000, and the publication describing this work was recognized in 2002 by the Charles C. Shepard Science Award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
