Claudia Stocks BACPATH 2017

Claudia Stocks

Claudia is a postdoctoral researcher currently working in the laboratory of Prof Kimberly Kline at the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She is investigating interactions between neutrophils and Enterococcus faecalis. Claudia graduated from the University of New South Wales with a bachelor’s degree in Advanced Science (Hons, Class I), after majoring in medical microbiology and immunology. Her Honours project in the laboratory of Prof. Ruiting Lan focussed on the development of a new diagnostic test to identify infection with emerging strains of Bordetella pertussis (whooping cough). In 2015 Claudia moved to Brisbane to begin a collaborative PhD project across the laboratories of Prof. Matthew Sweet and Prof. Mark Schembri. This project examined the innate immune antimicrobial pathway of zinc toxicity, and its role in defence against Uropathogenic E. coli. The key findings uncovered about this novel host/pathogen interaction were recently published in two papers, ‘Uropathogenic Escherichia coli employs both evasion and resistance to subvert immune-mediated zinc toxicity for dissemination’ PNAS USA (2019), and ‘LPS-inducible SLC30A1 drives human macrophage-mediated zinc toxicity against intracellular Escherichia coli’ J Leukoc Biol. (2020).