ESCMID/bioMérieux Awardee 2009
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 2008:
Tatjana Tracevska
born 1976 in Liepaya, Latvia; PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Latvia, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, in recognition of her outstanding contribution in the field of diagnostics in nosocomial infections and also her project on ‘Resistance mechanisms in coagulase-positive and coagulase-negative staphylococci’. She is now working on the project: The luxS gene: a novel diagnostic tool for the virulent S. epidermidis strains.
Research Interests
As a molecular biologist, Tatjana Tracevska was always interested in causative agents of infectious diseases such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Staphylococcus and Chlamydia spp. Her topic interests are bacterial spread and molecular mechanisms of bacterial drug resistance, as well as rapid diagnostic tools for emerging pathogens. Collaboration with clinical microbiologists highlighted the practical value of various PCR-based methods to be implemented in the clinical laboratory.
An increasing number of implanted medical device or catheter-related infections has occurred during the last years. These infections are caused by coagulase-negative staphylococci, the main etiological factors of nosocomial infections. The impact of staphylococcal virulence factors on infection is not well understood yet.
The aim of her present study is to develop a diagnostic tool for Staphylococcus epidermidis sensu stricto isolated in cases of intravascular catheter-related infections. The study is focused on virulence factors of Staphylococcus epidermidis, particularly, on biofilm formation. Like many pathogens, Staphylococcus epidermidis has a bacterial intercommunication system called quorum sensing that controls the expression of multiple genes in response to population density. It is expected that strains negative in the quorum sensing system luxS gene are more effective in biofilm production and vice versa. The project titled ‘The luxS gene: a novel diagnostic tool for the virulent Staphylococcus epidermidis strains’ will contribute to our knowledge about the mechanism of infection and will stimulate further studies on invasive staphylococci emerging in hospitals. Work will be carried out in the Laboratory of Bioanalytical Methods, University of Latvia in collaboration with the Hospital of Traumatology and Orthopedics in Riga, Latvia.
