By Nicole Gregory, contributing writer
Professor María Soledad Ramírez is passionate about her work in microbiology and its far-reaching potential to save the lives of people who are infected by dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria.
Antimicrobial resistance is an urgent global public health threat, according to the Centers for Disease Control, killing at least 1.27 million people worldwide and associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019.
“In microbiology, you have different organisms that can cause infection, such as viruses, parasites, fungus and bacteria. We work with bacteria,” Ramírez said, describing the work she does with her students as a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Cal State Fullerton.
“One of the main things that we are trying to do is to find novel or different approaches, or combination of approaches, to try to combat the multidrug-resistant pathogens — in this case, multidrug-resistant bacteria,” she said.
Ramírez has been sharing her passion and knowledge with undergraduate and graduate students since her arrival at Cal State Fullerton in 2014. In 2021, she was awarded the L. Donald Shields Excellence in Scholarship and Creativity Award for her work.
“We approach the crisis of the problem of the antimicrobial resistance from different sides,” Ramírez said. “One side is trying to find novel strategies to see if we can restore the susceptibility of multidrug-resistant bacteria — and what we saw is that we can, with the combination of novel molecules that we are testing. We observed that some of the compounds we are working with are killing the bacteria.
“And from the other side, we also try to understand why the bacteria are gaining resistance. That’s why we also do a lot of studies at the molecular and also transcriptomic (RNA) level, exposing the bacteria to different fluids. We also study at the genomic level the presence of novel genes, or mutations in genes, that can explain why the bacteria is now resistant to certain antibiotics or groups of antibiotics.”
Recently, the professor and her students discovered a potential treatment against the bacterium called Acinetobacter baumannii, which is found in hospitals and is resistant to many antibiotics. Their research was reported in the August issue of Scientific Reports.
This is important because there are few effective treatments against Acinetobacter baumannii, which can cause infections in the blood, urinary tract and lungs, and also in wounds, according to the CDC. Infections often occur in patients who are on ventilators, are in intensive care, have catheters or who are in the hospital for a long time.
Ramírez and her students tested different lactic acid bacteria strains to see if they could stop Acinetobacter baumannii from growing.
“We found that one in particular that we call CRL 2244 was exerting a huge, strong activity against the pathogenic strains that we had been testing,” she said.
Her enthusiasm has influenced her students; some of whom see her as a role model and have chosen to follow in her footsteps into microbiology. Several have authored their own research papers, some have gone on to get their doctorates and one graduate student is now working at Pfizer on vaccine development, Ramírez said.
“When they are with me, I try to share my passion for what I do. I share with them my research skills and, well, I get excited. We have lab meetings where we discuss our results. I always try to incentivize them to present the work in our area when there’s an opportunity here on campus. I also encourage them to apply to fellowships.”
Though neither of her parents were scientists, they encouraged Ramírez to pursue her education and achieve her doctorate. “I grew up in a very small town in the province of Buenos Aires that is called San Antonio de Areco,” she said. “I studied in the University of Buenos Aires and I received my degree of biochemistry and then I did my Ph.D. in microbiology. I was able to enter in a research career in Argentina until I applied for the professor position here.”
She has published numerous papers throughout the last decade.
Ramírez and her students collaborate with other professors, for instance, CSUF’s Marcelo Tolmasky, who also works with antimicrobial resistance. But they are not the only ones tackling the problem of drug-resistant bacteria.
“In other countries, in other institutions, there are many people working on this,” Ramírez said. “We need to find novel alternatives or novel antibiotics or a novel way to treat the patients that have infections with highly resistant microorganisms so that we can save that life.”
