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​Current antibiotics work by interfering with bacterial growth, which is a fine game plan… until it stops working. More and more, bacteria are finding ways around this approach, resulting in a huge antibiotic resistance problem. Dr. Jon Paczkowski may just have come up with a new defensive strategy and recently received a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate.

As we’ve seen repeatedly during the pandemic, it isn’t always easy to get our hands on everything we need, hmmm, cue the toilet paper, especially new things. This reality translates to addressing patients who have COVID today. By using tools we already have in labs across the country, we can capitalize on the technology, instruments and the know how to use them by using them in new ways.

Dr. St. George is quoted in the feature article beginning on page 5 and our own Infectious Disease Fellow Nora Cleary is featured on pg 19. Nora has been selected for the Edith Hsiung Memorial prize for her abstract/presentation on Hep A whole genome sequencing.  This is one of the two top travel awards from the American Society for Microbiology for a student, fellow, or technologist, presenting their work at the annual, international Clinical Virology Symposium, to be held this year in West Palm Beach.

Find out how Wadsworth Center and its partners have been detecting and tracking down Legionella from culture, prior to commercial availability of media, to direct fluorescent antibody testing, PCR, pulse field gel electrophoresis and now whole genome sequencing of patient and environmental isolates.

Having spent a lot of time in our homes recently, most of us are probably contemplating a dream renovation. If that project requires several professionals - plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc., we might have second thoughts.

Read on page 26 of Association of Public Health Laboratories' Fall/Winter Lab Matters Issue about Wadsworth Center's Collaboration with CDC's Biodefense Research and Development Laboratory.

SubPart 69-1 Newborn Screening for Phenylketonuria and Other Diseases  

In 2019, cases of a mysterious illness related to vaping, formally referred to as “e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury” (EVALI), were identified across the United States.  A significant number of cases affected young New Yorkers.  In association with NY Regional Poison Control Centers and medical facilities from around the state, Wadsworth Center’s Laboratory of Organic Analytical Chemistry analyzed vape fluid samples from suspected cases for cannabinoids, pesticides, synthetic cannabinoids, opioids, illicit drugs, an

SARS-CoV-2, like all viruses, is constantly creating new variants through mutation of its RNA genome. Most mutations are of little or no consequence. However, every once in a while, a new mutation can increase transmissibility, increase disease severity, cause the virus to escape the body’s immune response, or do any combination of these.

The World Health Organization estimates that almost 4,000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 28,000 people contract TB every day.  Currently, 13 million people in the United States live with latent (hidden) TB infection.

The P.O. Box addresses at the David Axelrod Institute and Empire State Plaza have been discontinued.  Mail is being forwarded here or returned to sender, subjecting specimens to unnecessary delays.  Please send all specimens to: Newborn Screening Program, 120 New Scotland Avenue, Albany, NY 12208.  This address is also on the Newborn Screening Collection Forms (DOH 1514).  Thank you for your attention to this matter. 

Please read about Kate's transition from APHL-CDC Bioinformatics Fellow to Research Scientist at Wadsworth Center in the time of COVID-19 on page 21 of Lab Matters.

The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) is pleased to announce the winners of its annual awards (page 32) for outstanding achievements in laboratory science, creative approaches to solving today’s public health challenges, and exemplary support of laboratories serving the public’s health. Awardees were honored on June 25, 2020 during a virtual ceremony.A recording of the awards ceremony is also available from the link above.

Infections with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb),  the etiological agent of tuberculosis (TB) in humans, are difficult to eradicate with antibiotics: a 6-month long multidrug regimen is necessary for the treatment of TB.  The drug recalcitrance of TB infections has been associated with a specialized subpopulation of Mtb cells, that do not replicate or are very slow growing and whose metabolism is significantly decreased.

Please read these important FAQs regarding newborn screening and COVID-19.

Wadsworth Center has long been committed to providing the next generation of public health professionals with the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities.More than 300 students have made Wadsworth Center their summer home over the course of nearly 30 years through the National Science Foundation-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program.

Wadsworth Center’s David Axelrod Institute, and all of Wadsworth Center for that matter, may be known to many as a place for research and education. But there’s a lot of clinical testing that goes on here too. You could even say the work performed here impacts every native New Yorker - from screening every baby born in the state, to testing for the measles, the flu, Legionella, Zika, C. auris, Ebola and much, much more. It all happens here.

Changes described are effective for specimens received and tested as of September 25, 2019.

This award recognizes those who effectively advance ethical science through significant, innovative contributions to the 3Rs of animal research - Refinement, Replacement and Reduction. Up to four such awards are presented annually – one each from North America, Europe, the Pacific Rim, and countries outside these three geographic areas.

Wadsworth Center Welcomes Dr. Jon Paczkowski Dr. Paczkowski received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2014 and was a postdoctoral fellow in the Bassler Laboratory at Princeton University prior to joining the Wadsworth Center. Here he uses the model organism Pseudomonas aeruginosa to study microbial signal transduction and cell-cell communication.