Sarah Schrader, Tri-I MD-PhD Student, Awarded NIH F30 Fellowship

Tri-I MD-PhD student Sarah Schrader has been awarded an F30 fellowship from the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for her work on elucidating mechanisms of antibiotic tolerance in Mycobacteria in Weill Cornell Medicine's Nathan Lab.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), kills more people each year than any other infectious agent. Sarah’s work, mentored by Drs. Julien Vaubourgeix and Carl Nathan at Weill Cornell Graduate School, aims to understand how some bacteria can transiently survive exposure to antibiotics in the absence of genetically-encoded, heritable resistance, a phenomenon known as antibiotic tolerance. Since antibiotic tolerant cells are thought to contribute to the long length of chemotherapy required to treat TB infections, primary treatment failure, recurrent infections, and the development of bona-fide drug resistance, understanding how they are formed is key to designing improved therapeutic strategies that can offer better outcomes for patients and stem the emergence of resistant strains.