Dr Ouellette is Full Professor at the Department of Medical Biology at Laval University. He holds a Canadian Research Chair on antimicrobial resistance, as well as a Burroughs Wellcome Fund in molecular parasitology. Dr Ouellette did his post-doctoral work at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is the author or co-author of 149 peer reviewed research papers, 16 book chapters, and has given over 300 lectures at scientific meetings and international symposiums (being also chairman in several symposiums). His research career has been devoted to the study of antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in the parasite Leishmania and more recently in the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae. The parasite Leishmania is a priority of the World Health Organization and one of the six top gun pathogens in tropical Medicine. Pentavalent antimony is the first line treatment against leishmaniasis but resistance has now reached an epidemic level in some part of the world. The work of Dr Ouellette on antimony resistance has highlighted the role of membrane transporters, including ABC-type proteins, and the thiol metabolism (cysteine, glutathione, trypanothion) as key players in resistance. Leishmania parasites are auxotrophs for folic acid. Studying this metabolic pathway and linked pathways (pterine and methionine) has pinpointed novel membrane transporters and enzymes that could serve as new targets. More recently, Dr Ouellette’s research interest has also included antibiotic resistance in the bacterium S. pneumoniae. Combining transcriptomics (microarrays) and proteomics techniques, his team is now studying resistance mechanisms in pathogens in a global scale. |
