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Yohei Doi, MD, PhD

  • Director, Center for Innovative Antimicrobial Therapy
  • Associate Professor of Medicine

    Education & Training

  • Medical School – Nagoya University School of Medicine (Japan) – MD
  • Graduate School – Nagoya University School of Medicine (Japan) - PhD
  • Residency – St. Luke’s – Roosevelt Hospital Center – Internal Medicine
  • Fellowship – UPMC – Infectious Disease
Research Grants

R01, R21

Research Summary

Antimicrobial resistance is now considered one of the top ten threats to global health by the WHO and is projected to cause as many as 10 million deaths annually by the year 2050. Dr. Doi has studied antimicrobial resistance mechanisms in pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria over the last 20 years. One of the focus areas in recent years has been colistin resistance in Acinetobacter baumannii, one of the most drug-resistant healthcare-associated pathogens. Colistin is the last-resort antibiotic in the therapy of drug-resistant A. baumannii, but resistance to colistin is emerging. His team’s work has deciphered how changes in the bacterial outer membrane neutralize colistin’s activity, developed a rapid diagnostic method of this resistance mechanism, and is studying approaches to restore the activity of colistin in combination with other antibiotics. The other area of focus is an investigation of fosfomycin, an old antibiotic with a broad spectrum of activity that is regaining attention as one of the few remaining active antibiotics against drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria. Dr. Doi’s team has been conducting a series of works to decipher emerging resistance mechanisms to fosfomycin and the development of small molecules that can potentiate its activity in the setting of resistance.

Representative Publications
  1. Ito R, Mustapha MM, Tomich AD, Callaghan JD, McElheny CL, Mettus RT, Shanks RMQ, Sluis-Cremer N, Doi Y. Widespread fosfomycin resistance in Gram-negative bacteria attributable to the chromosomal fosA gene. mBio 2017;8:e00749-17.
  2. Ito R, Tomich AD, McElheny CL, Mettus R, Sluis-Cremer N, Doi Y. Inhibition of fosfomycin resistance protein FosA by phosphonoformate (foscarnet) in multidrug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens. Antimicrob Agents Chemother 2017;61:e01424-17.  
  3. Guo Y, Tomich AD, McElheny CL, Cooper VS, Tait-Kamradt A, Wang M, Hu F, Rice L, Sluis-Cremer N, Doi Y. High-level fosfomycin resistance in vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium. Emerg Infect Dis 2017;23:1902-4.  
  4. Mustapha MM, Li B, Pacey MP, Mettus RT, McElheny CL, Marshall CW, Ernst RK, Cooper VS, Doi Y. Phylogenomics of colistin-susceptible and resistant, extensively drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. J Antimicrob Chemother 2018;73:2952-2959.  
  5. Leung LM, McElheny CL, Gardner FM, Chandler CE, Bowler SL, Mettus RT, Spychala CN, Fowler EL, Opene BNA, Myers RA, Goodlett DR, Doi Y, Ernst RK. A prospective study of Acinetobacter baumannii complex isolates and colistin susceptibility monitoring by mass spectrometry of microbial membrane glycolipids. J Clin Microbiol 2018;57:e01100-18.
  6. Iovleva A, Mettus RT, McElheny CL, Mustapha MM, Van Tyne D, Shields RK, Pasculle AW, Cooper VS, Doi Y. Reduced ceftazidime and ertapenem susceptibility due to production of OXA-2 in Klebsiella pneumoniae ST258. J Antimicrob Chemother 2019;74:2203-2208.