José M. Munita

I completed medical school and Internal Medicine residency in Chile, and then came to the US where I finished my training in Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and the MD Anderson Cancer Center. My main areas of interest are the clinical and molecular aspects of bacterial antimicrobial resistance, with special emphasis on Gram-positive organisms. For this reason, I also spent a year as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Laboratory for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Texas Medical School, directed by Dr. Cesar A. Arias, and then continued my training as a clinician scientist with an Advanced Infectious Diseases Fellowship. During this time, my main focus of research was to help decipher the molecular mechanisms of daptomycin (DAP) resistance in enterococci. Specifically, I had the opportunity of leading the translational aspects of our project, through which we were able to find genetic determinants present in a subset of DAP-susceptible enterococcal isolates that decrease the activity of the antibiotic and confer a high-risk for clinical failure in patients with invasive enterococcal infections. Back in my home country, Chile, I established a research group dedicated to the study of multidrug-resistant organisms in Latin America, including the study of their molecular epidemiology, mechanisms of resistance and clinical outcomes of patients infected with resistant bacteria. In addition, I have had the opportunity of participating in several joint projects with the US CDC in order to improve our understanding of the role of bacterial colonization with drug resistant pathogens in the dissemination of antimicrobial resistance and to establish the role of the environment, water sources and food as a source of antimicrobial resistant bacteria.