Professors Catherine Ison and Brian Spratt

Professor Catherine Ison
Professor Catherine Ison is a non-clinical microbiologist. She is Director of the newly formed Sexually Transmitted Bacteria Reference Laboratory (STBRL) at the Specialist and Reference Microbiology Division of the Health Protection Agency. She is also a Visiting Professor of Investigative Science and Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London.

Her main interests are the genetics of antimicrobial resistance and molecular epidemiology of gonorrhoea but she has also worked on bacterial vaginosis and Haemophilus ducreyi. In 1997 she initiated the London Gonococcal Surveillance Programme, which was extended nationally in 2000 (Gonococcal Resistance to Antimicrobials Surveillance Programme; GRASP). She was the founder of the Bacterial Special Interest Group of the Medical Society for the Study of Venereal Diseases (MSSVD) and is currently its chair. In her new role she plans to strengthen microbiology of STIs in England and Wales by providing a common focus for gonorrhoea, chlamydia and syphilis.

contact details
Professor Catherine Ison
Director, Sexually Transmitted Bacteria Reference Laboratory
Specialist and Reference Microbiology Division, Health Protection Agency
61 Colindale Avenue
London NW9 5HT, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 8200 4400 ext. 3462
E-mail: catherine.ison@hpa.org.uk

Professor Brian Spratt
Brian Spratt has been a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow since 1989 and is Professor of Molecular Microbiology in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, and was previously a Professor at Oxford and Sussex Universities.

In the early 1970s he worked on the mechanism of action of penicillin and identified the physiological targets of penicillin action (penicillin-binding proteins). In the 1980s he worked on resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics, particularly resistance mediated by alterations of the penicillin-binding proteins. Currently his research interests are in the evolutionary and population biology of major bacterial pathogens and in multilocus sequence-based methods for the unambiguous characterization of major bacterial pathogens on the internet (MLST).

contact details
Professor Brian Spratt
Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow
Department of Infectious Disease Epidmiology
Imperial College London
St Mary's Campus
Norfolk Place
London W2 1PG, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 3629
Fax: +44 (0)20 7262 8140
E-mail: b.spratt@ic.ac.uk
Web: www.med.ic.ac.uk/divisions/62/research/Brian_Spratt.asp

Biographical information correct as at April 2004.

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