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MEET THE EXPERTS & PATIENTS

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EXPERTS

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Dr. Rafael Laniado-Laborin, MD, Head of Tuberculosis Clinic, (Clinica y Laboratorio de Tuberculosis), General Hospital, Tijuana, Mexico. His clinic treats patients throughout Mexico with antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis.

 

Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, PhD, MPH, Dir., Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Politics, Washington, DC., studies the economics and epidemiology of global health problems, including antibiotic resistance. In 2014, Laxminarayan served on Obama's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. His CDDEP newsletter summarizes world developments concerning dangerous infectious diseases. 

 

Dr. Timothy K. Lu, PhD, MD, Assoc. Prof., Departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Biological Engineering, MIT, Cambridge, MA, applies synthetic biology to major health challenges. 

 

Dr. Douglas A. Mitchell, PhD, Prof., Chemistry, Univ. of IL-Urbana, heads a lab focusing on the interface of chemistry and biology that seeks to identify and characterize novel antibiotic compounds.  

 

Dr. Eleftherios Mylonakis, MD, Prof. Medical Science, Molecular Biology and Immunology, Brown University, directs a lab researching microbial pathogenesis and host responses. He has edited five books on infectious diseases and is the founding editor-in-chief of Virulence.

 

Lord Jim O’Neill, PhD, global economist, chaired the landmark report, “The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance”, adopted by the UN in 2016. O’Neill co-authored Superbugs: An Arms Race Against Bacteria (Harvard Univ. Press, 2018).

 

Dr. Kevin Outterson, JD, Prof., Public Health Law, Boston University, MA, with an expertise in business models for antibiotic development and use, is the executive director and principal investigator of CARB-X. 

 

Dr. Ina Park, MD, Assoc. Prof., Family Community Medicine, UCSF, is engaged in community health for STIs through research, teaching, and patient care. Her first book for the lay public is Strange Bedfellows (Flatiron Books, forthcoming 2021). 

 

Dr. David Payne, PhD, VP, Infectious Diseases, GlaxoSmithKline, is GSK’s Senior Site Leader for its US R&D Hub. GSK, a British international pharmaceutical company, is among the few large companies dedicated to developing new antibiotics. 

 

Dr. Lance Price, PhD, Prof., Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University, founded and directs the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center. He also contributes to government antibiotic stewardship policies.

 

Dr. John H. Rex, MD, Chief Medical Officer & Director, F2G, Ltd; Editor-in-Chief, AMR.solutions. For thirty years, Rex, a physician and drug developer, has focused on the economics of antibiotic R&D and policy aspects of antimicrobial agents.

  

Dr. Robert (“Chip”) Schooley, MD, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, UC San Diego School of Medicine, treated Tom Paterson with bacteriophage cocktails combined with antibiotics. Schooley co-directs UCSD’s new center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH) with Dr. Steffanie Strathdee. 

 

Dr. Neil Stollman, MD, Gastroenterology Specialist, Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Oakland, CA, and a C. diff. expert, helped revive an ancient Chinese fecal transplant therapy to treat C. diff. patients, like Christi Nelson. 

 

Dr. Steffanie Strathdee, PhD, Prof., Global Health, Department of Medicine, UCSD and an infectious disease epidemiologist, introduced bacteriophages to Dr. Robert Schooley’s treatment of her husband, Tom Patterson. With Schooley, she co-directs the IPATH center. With Patterson, she co-authored The Perfect Predator (Hachette, 2019). 

 

Dr. Fred C. Tenover, PhD, VP, Cepheid, Sunnyvale, CA, and also a consulting pathology professor at Stanford, has had a long-standing interest in antimicrobial resistance and the development of rapid diagnostic methods for infectious diseases.

 

Dr. Rosa van Mansfeld, PhD, MD, Medical Microbiology Specialist at Vrije University Medical Centre and Infection Control, Amsterdam, and heads its infection prevention program globally recognized for its high-tech hospital methods for containing superbugs. 

 

Dr. Gerald Wright, PhD, Dir., the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, focuses on restoring antibiotics’ potency via key adjuvants.

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PATIENTS

 

Grant Hill, former NBA All-Star basketball player for the Phoenix Suns, survived a serious MRSA infection in his ankle. In 2018, he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Post-basketball, Hill became a CBS broadcaster and a co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks. 

 

Tori Kinamon, a Brown University gymnastics star, endured months of successful treatment for a deep-thigh MRSA infection, afterward studying in the lab of Dr. Eleftherios Mylonakis at Brown. Currently, she is a student at Duke University School of Medicine.

 

Kari Kinamon, Peachtree City, GA, Tori’s mother, was her vital hospital advocate.

 

Christi Nelson, a C. diff. survivor, suffered serial bouts with the disease post-cancer therapy, until being successfully treated with a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). She has resumed her busy professional life as a cartographer. 

 

Dr. Thomas Patterson, PhD, Prof. of Psychiatry, UCSD, an expert in disease-related psychological effects, survived one of the world’s most lethal superbugs, Acinetobacter baumannii. With his wife Steffanie Strathdee, he co-authored a memoir about his ordeal, The Perfect Predator (Hachette, 2019). 

 

Dr. Gerald Wright, PhD, An antibiotic research expert and a survivor of a salmonella infection, Wright had high incentive for his lab to focus on this superbug, leading to his discovery of an additive to restore an antibiotic's potency.

 

Anonymous MDR-TB patient: A multiple-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis patient, pseudonym “Juanita” was cured only after grueling antibiotic treatments with many affects for over a year.

 

Generic MDR gonorrhea patient: Total anonymity laws governing all gonorrhea cases dictated the use of a generic case in this film, but one based on a documented patient and scientific data.