Resistant to Failure

A Duke University researcher survives a sticky situation at a federal research institution to make major strides in determining the genetic roots of Staphylococcus aureus antibiotic resistance.

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Vance Fowler's postdoc Sun-Hee AhnDUKE UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

In 2006 Duke University clinician Vance Fowler found the perfect animal model to investigate a question that had been bugging him ever since he started his residency at the university’s medical school in the mid-1990s: Why were some patients much better at fighting off bacterial infections than others?

Scanning research on more than 20 different inbred mouse strains, Fowler learned that they had a dramatic range of response to infection with the gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. At one extreme was a strain that easily succumbed to infection: A/J (commonly used in cancer and immunology research because of its propensity to develop tumors). At the other was a highly resistant strain called C57BL/6J—the mouse strain most widely used in research.

As a clinician with no lab ...

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