Warren Rose, associate professor (CHS) in the Pharmacy Practice Division, is co-PI with Sanjay Shukla, Marshfield Clinic, on a pilot grant award from the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) and the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation.

Their proposal titled “Biomarkers of Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia” will focus on how the host immune response to MRSA impacts treatment outcomes with antibiotics. Approximately half of patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections experience treatment failure, and death rates could approach 20% despite receiving appropriate antibiotics. This study will investigate the genetics of the host and pathogen and create a model to find predictors of how to improve antibiotic selection to improve outcomes.

This collaboration highlights strengths of the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy in host immune response and antimicrobial pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics and the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation expertise in MRSA genetics and computational genetics. Among nine applications, this was the only proposal selected and comes with a monetary award of $50,000.