Dr Charlene Rodrigues
MBChB (Hons) MRCPCH PGDip Paediatric ID DPhil
Research Fellow
in microbial genomics
LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
Charlene is a clinical academic, with her research based at LSHTM in microbial genomics and working as a paediatric consultant specialising in infectious diseases at St Mary's Hospital, London. Charlene graduated from medical school (Leicester University) in 2007 and subsequently trained as an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow (Imperial College London). She completed Paediatric Infectious Diseases/Immunology GRID training (Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle) with Microbiology (St George's Hospital, London). She has long been interested in genomics, in the context of host and pathogen variation, and undertook a Wellcome Trust funded DPhil in genomic epidemiology (University of Oxford), studying meningococcal vaccine antigens.
Charlene is working to better integrate genomics and bioinformatic analyses into healthcare settings to ensure they are more accessible to clinicians, microbiologists and epidemiologists to improve patient care.
Charlene's full publications list: ORCID and Google Scholar
Affiliations
Centres
Research
Charlene's research interests are in applications of microbial genomics in the clinical and public health setting to inform preventative and therapeutic measures. Charlene completed a Wellcome Trust funded DPhil, supervised by Prof. Martin Maiden at the University of Oxford (2015-18), in genomic epidemiology of meningococcal vaccine antigens. Charlene developed genomic typing methods (Bexsero Antigen Sequence Typing, Outer Membrane Vesicle Typing) to assess the diversity and distribution of meningococcal vaccine antigens in a national collection of disease-causing meningococci from the UK. These tools along with further translational genomic applications (MenDeVAR Index) are publicly-available via pubmlst.org.
Charlene continues to develop methods to better integrate genomics and bioinformatic analyses in accessible reports for non-genomics specialists in healthcare settings. Her work focusses on reporting of Klebsiella pneumoniae genomic data, as a major cause of neonatal sepsis particularly affecting LMIC, and the associated antimicrobial resistance.