Congratulations to Haikun Zhang, PhD, who recently received a one-year, $19,000 research award from the Wisconsin Partnership Program’s 20th Anniversary Postdoctoral Grant Program. Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow who works jointly in the labs of Division of Surgical Oncology Associate Professor Dr. Muhammed Murtaza and Division of Acute Care and Regional General Surgery Assistant Professor Dr. Mehreen Kisat.
Zhang’s research focus is on the development of computational methods for analyzing cell-free DNA (cfDNA) to detect and monitor diseases. cfDNA is released into the bloodstream when a cell dies. While it can be found in healthy patients, concentrations of cfDNA can be much higher in people with certain health conditions, such as transplant patients and people with cancer. Zhang’s interest is in developing methods to better detect sepsis in critically-ill patients by analyzing cfDNA in blood.
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that occurs when the immune system aggressively responds to an infection or injury, leading to tissue damage, organ failure, and even death. Time is of the essence to detect and treat sepsis, but in the absence of a gold-standard there is significant variability in how clinicians diagnose it.
“When an infection is the cause of sepsis, treatment with antibiotics is required. The problem is that current methods of detecting infections, called microbiology cultures, can take several days depending on the type of microbe being tested” explained Zhang. “Critically ill patients don’t have that kind of time, so clinicians will often administer broad-spectrum antibiotics while they wait for test results. This practice can contribute to antibiotic (or antimicrobial) resistance.”
Working under the mentorship of Kisat and Murtaza, Zhang plans to analyze serial blood samples taken from critically ill patients for the first 10 days after their admission to the intensive care unit (ICU). They’ll be looking for fragmentation patterns of cfDNA that may help identify patients who develop sepsis in the ICU and determine if the DNA fragments can tell us the site of the infection. These ideas build on earlier work from the group showing that analysis of changes in cfDNA fragmentation patterns can enable cancer detection.
“When patients develop sepsis, the body’s response may be changing how cfDNA is fragmented. We are hoping we can adapt the fragmentation analysis framework and apply it to benefit patients with sepsis,” said Zhang. “Analysis of cfDNA fragmentation patterns can be performed rapidly, with limited material, and at a very low cost. If we are successful, this approach could significantly improve current diagnostic workflows in the ICU. I’m thrilled with the Wisconsin Partnership Program’s support of this study, which is a critical first step in my career development.”