2011 Award Winner Assistant Professor Suzan Rooijakkers, PhD
University Medical Center Utrecht, Department of Medical
Microbiology, Utrecht, The Netherlands | ||Listen here Dr. Suzan
Rooijakkers' podcast with Nature and learn more about her work
and the impact the award has had on her career. | bacterial
Immune escape The innate immune system is critical in our first
line of defense against bacteria. Phagocytes migrate from the
blood to the site of infection to engulf and kill bacteria. This
is largely dependent on the activation of the complement system,
a family of thirty plasma proteins, that label bacteria with
opsonins (C3b) to support phagocyte recognition and generate
chemo-attractants (C5a) to attract cells to the site of
infection. My group discovered that the pathogen Staphylococcus
aureus secretes a number of proteins that block critical steps
in the complement cascade. As a PhD student, I discovered a
unique bacterial complement inhibitor (SCIN) that blocks a key
enzyme of the complement cascade: