A Johnson & Johnson Scholar's Story: From Antibiotic-Resistance Research to Frontiers in Microbiology

Mihai Octavian Dan, a General Medicine student and one of UMFCD's five 2024 Johnson & Johnson scholars, studied the susceptibility of 150 Klebsiella pneumoniae strains to last-resort antibiotics, testing them against more than 30 antibiotics — including five last-line therapies — and sequencing the genomes of 64 strains to confirm their carbapenemase resistance mechanisms.

The study identified two antimicrobial combinations with synergistic potential — one of them only the fourth such report in the international literature — and was the largest project of its kind applied to this many Klebsiella pneumoniae strains. The results were presented at an international congress for young doctors and students in Timișoara and at a European infectious-disease epidemiology conference in Stockholm, and the resulting paper was published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

The student is now continuing his research in microbiology and infectious disease, aspiring to a career in public health.