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Prof. Dr. med. Sarah Tschudin Sutter

Department of Clinical Research
Profiles & Affiliations

Immunology & Infectious Diseases

Area of Research

Board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases with the main research interest in hospital acquired infections, multi drug-resistant pathogens, C. difficile and infection prevention and control interventions.


Approved Research Projects

  • Transmission of ESBL-producing Enterobacteriaceae (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03465683)
  • Epidemiology of Carbapenemase-producing Bacteria in a Swiss Tertiary Care Hospital (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04098133)
  • Comparison of Pulsed-field Gel Electrophoresis and Whole Genome Sequencing to Determine Transmission Rate of ESBL-producing E.Coli (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04323553)
  • Simplifying the World Health Organization (WHO) Protocol for Hand Hygiene (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03588221)
  • SIMPLIFY the Hand Hygiene Procedure - Three Steps Versus Six Steps for Performing Hand Hygiene (SIMPLIFY Study) (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04187040)
  • Clinical comparison of treatment strategiesin AmpC beta-laxtamase producing Enterobacterales in a Swiss tertiary hospital (ClinicalTrials.gov identifyer NCT04577989)

Selected Publications

Aguilar-Bultet, Lisandra, García-Martín, Ana B., Vock, Isabelle, Maurer Pekerman, Laura, Stadler, Rahel, Schindler, Ruth, Battegay, Manuel, Stadler, Tanja, Gómez-Sanz, Elena, & Tschudin-Sutter, Sarah. (2023). Within-host genetic diversity of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacterales in long-term colonized patients. Nature Communications, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-44285-w

URLs
URLs

Fitzpatrick F, Safdar N, van Prehn J, & Tschudin-Sutter S. (2022). How can patients with Clostridioides difficile infection on concomitant antibiotic treatment be best managed? The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 22(11), e336–e340. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00274-2

URLs
URLs

Aguilar-Bultet L, Bagutti C, Egli A, Alt M, Maurer Pekerman L, Schindler R, Furger R, Eichenberger L, Roloff T, Steffen I, Huebner P, Stadler T, & Tschudin-Sutter S. (2021). Identification of a Cluster of Extended-spectrum Beta-Lactamase-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae Sequence Type 101 Isolated from Food and Humans. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 73(2), 332–335. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1164

URLs
URLs

Tschudin-Sutter, Sarah, Sepulcri, Daniel, Dangel, Marc, Ulrich, Anja, Frei, Reno, & Widmer, Andreas F. (2019). Simplifying the World Health Organization Protocol: 3 Steps Versus 6 Steps for Performance of Hand Hygiene in a Cluster-randomized Trial. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 69(4), 614–620. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciy948

URLs
URLs

Selected Projects & Collaborations

Project cover

NCCR AntiResist: New approaches to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Umbrella Project  | 32 Project Members

Antibiotics are powerful and indispensable drugs to treat life threatening bacterial infections such as sepsis or pneumonia. Antibiotics also play a central role in many other areas of modern medicine, in particular to protect patients with compromised immunity during cancer therapies, transplantations or surgical interventions. These achievements are now at risk, with the fraction of bacterial pathogens that are resistant to one or more antibiotics steadily increasing. In addition, development of novel antimicrobials lags behind, suffering from inherently high attrition rates in particular for drug candidates against the most problematic Gram-negative bacteria. Together, these factors increasingly limit the options clinicians have for treating bacterial infections. The overarching goal of NCCR AntiResist is to elucidate the physiological properties of bacterial pathogens in infected human patients in order to find new ways of combatting superbugs. Among the many societal, economic, and scientific factors that impact on the development of alternative strategies for antibiotic discovery, our limited understanding of the physiology and heterogeneity of bacterial pathogens in patients ranks highly. Bacteria growing in tissues of patients experience environments very different from standard laboratory conditions, resulting in radically different microbial physiology and population heterogeneity compared to conditions generally used for antibacterial discovery. There is currently no systematic strategy to overcome this fundamental problem. This has resulted in: (i) suboptimal screens that identify new antibiotics, which do not target the special properties of bacteria growing within the patient; (ii) an inability to properly evaluate the efficacy of non-conventional antibacterial strategies; (iii) missed opportunities for entirely new treatment strategies. This NCCR utilizes patient samples from ongoing clinical studies and establishes a unique multidisciplinary network of clinicians, biologists, engineers, chemists, computational scientists and drug developers that will overcome this problem. We are excited to merge these disciplines in order to determine the properties of pathogens infecting patients, establish conditions in the lab that reproduce these properties and utilize these in-vitro models for antimicrobial discovery and development. In addition, clinical-trial networks and the pharmaceutical industry have major footprints in antimicrobial R&D. Exploiting synergies between these players has great potential for making transformative progress in this critical field of human health. This NCCR maintains active collaborations with Biotech SMEs and large pharmaceutical companies with the goal to: accelerate antibiotic discovery by providing relevant read-outs for early prioritization of compounds; enable innovative screens for non-canonical strategies such as anti-virulence inhibitors and immunomodulators; identify new antibacterial strategies that effectively combat bacteria either by targeting refractory subpopulations or by synergizing with bacterial stresses imposed by the patients' own immune system. This NCCR proposes a paradigm shift in antibiotic discovery by investigating the physiology of bacterial pathogens in human patients. This knowledge will be used to develop assays for molecular analyses and drug screening under relevant conditions and to accelerate antibacterial discovery, improve treatment regimens, and uncover novel targets for eradicating pathogens. Through this concerted effort, this NCCR will make a crucial and unique contribution to winning the race against superbugs.