Presenting Author
Mayo Clinic
Hello, my name is Adam Edwinson and I am a Post-Doctoral Fellow within the Enteric Neuroscience Program (ENSP) at the Mayo Clinic under the supervision of Dr. Madhusudan Grover.
My PhD training was under the advisement of Dr. John McEvoy at North Dakota State University, focusing on understanding the intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium and the life cycle progression of the parasite. My work was able to identify the importance of specific carbohydrate residues decorating the intestinal surface that drive parasite invasion and replication. Additionally, we were able to show that the transition from invasion to replication was driven by serine proteases expressed in the cell wall of the parasite.
I arrived at Mayo Clinic in the fall of 2017 and have taken the lead on several projects, all with a focus on post-infection irritable bowel syndrome (PI-IBS) following Campylobacter jejuni infection. Our work has led to the discovery that a subset of PI-IBS patients has higher fecal proteolytic activity (PA), greater colonic permeability and decreased stool microbial diversity. These findings have guided future studies attempting to answer the broader question of how luminal PA is regulated in the GI tract. Additionally I have piloted projects that use human derived organoids to understnad the role gender and psychological state such as anxiety and depression, influece C. jejuni infectivity and host responses to infection.