Congratulations to Rachel Courtice on her defense! Rachel's graduate research focused on the emergence of antimicrobial resistance in E. coli and Staphylococcus pseudintermedius causing canine urinary tract infections over a 4 year period. For the most part Rachel's results are a good news story, resistance is still remarkably rare in our region; but she did identify a number of ESBL producing E. coli and even strain belonging to ST131 which possessed the aac6-Ib-cr quinolone

As the human animal bond is increasingly recognized to contribute to people’s wellbeing, the therapeutic role of companion animals is increasingly exploited in healthcare, long term care and community settings. But… concerns related to theoretical zoonotic risks associated with dogs in health care settings often limit the therapy dog visits. Today Bev presented some of her post-doctoral work exploring the frequency of carriage of microbial hazards among therapy dogs in Saskat

It’s that time of the year again when we welcome eager summer students into the lab to try their hand at a research project. This year, theRubinlab is hosting Cayla Pinheiro and Alix Nelson who are going into their 2nd and 3rd years of the DVM program respectively. Cayla is going to be characterizing a set of canine Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates that we’ve been collecting from a Prairie Diagnostic Services since late 2013. Over the summer, she’s going to work to determine t

I’m pleased to welcome Moses Ikechukwu as a visiting student to the RubinLab and Department of Veterinary Microbiology for the next 6 months. Moses is currently pursuing his PhD in Pharmaceutical Microbiology and Biotechnology in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Nigeria. Moses’s project involves the characterization of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius from dogs and people. During his time at the RubinLab, Moses will be doing antimicr

It was a pleasure to speak at a community discussion about the benefits (and some risks) associated with animal assisted interventions last Friday at Station 20 West. Thanks so much to Dr. Colleen Dell for the opportunity to engage with the public and dispel (or address?) some myths about the role of dogs in the epidemiology of human infections. To learn more about this event, and the other speakers check out Colleen's website. #zoonoses #OneHealth #canine #Staphylococcuspseu

Congratulations to Roshan Priyantha for successfully defending his PhD! Roshan was a founding member of theRubinlab, joining in September 2013. Roshan’s thesis focused on antimicrobial resistance in Staphylococcus pseudintermedius, an important pathogen of dogs. Throughout his research Roshan addressed questions relating to the emergence of resistance in the Saskatoon area, comparing isolates from different types of infections and identifying the molecular basis for tetracycl

This week, Rachel had the chance to present her research entitled: “Fosfomycin Resistant Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus pseudintermedius Isolated from Canine Urinary Tract Infections in Western Canada” at CACMID 2017 in Toronto. We were really excited to see a study describing the fosfomycin susceptibility of human urinary isolates; it turns out that resistance is (fortunately) uncommon whether the bugs are infecting people or dogs! This was the third time Rubin lab memb

Poster season is certainly upon us and RubinLab members have been busy sharing the results of their investigations with the world. First Roshan had the opportunity to share the results of his investigation entitled "The Genetic Basis of Tetracycline Resistance in Canine Staphylococcus pseudintermedius" at the StaphPath2017 conference which was held in conjunction with Antimicrobials 2017 in Adelaide, Australia. Joe also had the chance to present some of Beverly Morrison's wor

I am pleased to announce yet another publication describing human Staphylococcus pseudintermedius to come out of our collaboration with Drs. Deirdre Church and Ranjani Somayaji at Calgary Laboratory Services. We were delighted to have the opportunity to describe the results of our study to the general public in an article entitled: “Staphylococcus pseudintermedius infection: a downside to man’s best friend?” which was published today in the Atlas of Science. Check it out here

In collaboration with physician scientists at the University of Calgary (Drs. Deirdre Church and Ranjani Somayaji), members of TheRubinLab (Joe and Roshan) discuss the zoonotic potential of Staphylococcus pseudintermedius, an organism commonly associated with dogs. Check out our invited editorial HERE just published in Future Microbiology where we share our opinions about this increasingly recognized zoonosis! Image: Staphylococcus pseudintermedius on blood agar. Find more im