Adeline Espinasse receives Baxter Young Investigator Award

Adeline Espinasse, a 5th-year graduate student working with Professor Erin Carlson, has received a Baxter Young Investigator Award. She was selected as a First-Tier Awardee, of which there are only six in the nation. This prestigious award seeks to stimulate and reward research applicable to the development of therapies and medical products that save and sustain patients' lives. 

Adeline studies histidine kinases that are bacterial proteins involved in antibiotic resistance and bacterial pathogenicity. She researches the development of adenosine triphosphate-based probes to improve the fundamental understanding of the histidine kinases, and the development of small molecules that inhibit the activity of the histidine kinases to block bacterial virulence and antibiotic resistance mechanisms.

For the Baxter Award, Adeline was honored for her work on the development of a novel class of molecules that decrease the pathogenicity of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). MRSA causes staph infections that are difficult to treat because of their resistance to some antibiotics, leading to its spread and sometimes leading to sepsis and death. 

Adeline and other researchers combined biochemical and cell-based assays as well as molecular docking to design these molecules. They demonstrated the efficacy of those molecules in a murine skin infection model caused by MRSA and saw a reduction of skin lesions by 65 percent and bacterial burden by 10 percent.

Her adviser Professor Carlson said: “I could not be more proud of the work that Adeline has done during her tenure with my group. She has shown incredible intelligence and tenacity as she’s pursued an incredibly difficult project. She’s made excellent contributions to the scientific community and is highly deserving of this recognition."

Adeline earned her master's degree from the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Rouen, France. Before pursuing a doctorate at the University of Minnesota, she worked for five years as a research and development chemist in the pharmaceutical industry with PCAS-Nanosyn in Santa Rosa, CA. Her research encompassed developing scalable processes for the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients. After earning her doctorate, she hopes again work in the pharmaceutical industry. 

In addition to her research, Adeline is an involved graduate student, working with the Joint Safety Team and serving as a member and chair of its Education & Resources Committee. She is an author on a paper published in the Journal of Chemical Education about this work. She worked for the University's Office for Technology commercialization, writing technical reports about new technologies for patent filing and commercial viability. She also was the Gordon Research Seminar co-chair from 2018 to 2020 focused on Sensory Transduction in Microorganisms.

Adeline's honors include a Council of Graduate Studies Travel Award, National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Grant, and Midwest Women Chemists Retreat travel grant.

She will present her research at the Baxter Young Investigator Award ceremony set for Nov. 12, 2020.