In 2020, Caitlin completed a BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Following this, Caitlin completed a MSc in Tropical Disease Biology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2021, during which she completed a research project investigating memory B cell responses to experimentally induced Streptococcus pneumoniae infection in older adults.
Currently Caitlin is part of the MRC Doctoral Training Program at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in collaboration with the University of Lancaster. The first year of the PhD involves a MRes in Quantitative and Translational Skills in Global Health which has involved three research projects: Flucloxacillin Prescribing at GP Practices in England, Experimentally Evolved Pseudomonas aeruginosa to Meropenem Resistance and Transcriptomics and Bioinformatics in Mycobacterium bovis.
Research
Caitlin's working PhD title is a Molecular and Pharmacological Characterisation of Epistatic Drug Interactions in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, with supervisors Professor Giancarlo Biagini and Dr Adam Roberts. Ultimately, the evolution of drug resistance is dependent on the ability of the bacteria to retain a resistance phenotype and fitness in the absence of antibiotic pressure. Whilst drug resistance acquisition is often associated with a decrease in fitness, epistatic interactions between drug resistance mutations and secondary or compensatory mutations are used to mitigate fitness loss. There is a need to characterise epistatic interactions of polydrug resistance conferring mutations in order to inform treatment protocols that mitigate the evolution of drug resistance.