Natalie E. West, MD, MHS
Associate Professor of Medicine
Associate Director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program, Johns Hopkins
Johns Hopkins University
1. What is your specialty and your primary area of focus?
Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
2. Please tell us a bit about Johns Hopkins.
The Johns Hopkins Hospital(opens in new tab) is an academic medical center with more than 1,000 beds. Our Cystic Fibrosis Center serves approximately 450 adults and 300 children with CF.
3. Please tell us about your research team—sub- or co-investigators, key study coordinators, research nurses, and others—who play a vital role in ARLG studies.
We have 8 physicians and 6 research administrators/coordinators.
4. Which ARLG projects have you participated in as a clinical trial site?
As a site principal investigator, I led the PHAGE study(opens in new tab), a Phase 1b/2, Multi-Centered, Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial of the Safety and Microbiological Activity of a Single Dose of Bacteriophage Therapy in Cystic Fibrosis Subjects Colonized with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, with research coordinators Shivani Patel and Alicia Greene.
5. Why is the mission of ARLG important to you?
In cystic fibrosis, we see a lot of chronic colonization of pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Stenotrophomonas, and Burkholderia, many of which are resistant to several of the antibiotics we have available to us. The work of ARLG is important to our CF community but also to the health of individuals worldwide who suffer from resistant, chronic infections.
6. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your work with the ARLG?
I’m appreciative of how this large expert network provides multi-site trial infrastructure for studies that would be difficult for one lab or institution to run alone.