ESCMID/bioMérieux Awardee 2006
In recognition of excellence and major contributions to progress in clinical microbiology by a young scientist from Eastern Europe, the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases and bioMérieux are proud to announce the recipient of this Research Grant in Clinical Microbiology in 2006:
Maja Rupnik
born 1967 in Maribor, Slovenia; Assistant Professor at Medical Faculty, University of Maribor and at the Institute of Public Health, Maribor, Slovenia, in recognition of her outstanding contributions to our understanding of the pathogenicity, epidemiology and genetics of Clostridium difficile. The toxinotyping scheme, which she developed for differentiating strains with variant toxin genes, is used throughout the world.
Research interests
Her main research interests focus on two large toxins (toxin A, TcdA and toxin B, TcdB), both considered as the major virulence factors of Clostridium difficile. Early research on variability of the toxin coding region resulted in establishment of toxinotyping – a PCR-based method for analysis of the entire PaLoc region. Later, her research focussed on epidemiology of variant C. difficile strains, in particular on TcdA-negative, TcdB-positive strains (A-B+ strains), and on strains that produce an additional toxin, binary toxin CDT. Another aspect of her research interests is the biology of C. difficile toxins. Here she studied the proteolytic processing of TcdB and the crystal structure of receptor-binding regions of TcdA. She promoted the discussion on the unification of the nomenclature of C. difficile toxins. The revised nomenclature is now supported by all major groups active in the field.
