{"id":1730746,"date":"2025-06-17T11:15:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/mah3x\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T15:18:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T19:18:24","slug":"mah3x","status":"publish","type":"faculty-listing","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/mah3x\/","title":{"rendered":"Hughes, Molly A."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The goal of the primary research project in the Hughes laboratory is to investigate a select family of host interferon-inducible CXC chemokines known as CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">9<\/span>, CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">10<\/span>, and CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">11<\/span> as novel antimicrobial agents to combat bacterial pathogens that cause infections.  For our ongoing project, we study the lung pathogen, <em>Bacillus anthracis<\/em>, based on our work demonstrating that CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">9<\/span>, CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">10<\/span>, and CXCL<span class=\"normalsize\">11<\/span> exhibit antimicrobial effects against both the spore and vegetative bacillus form of <em>B. anthracis<\/em>. This work has led to exciting new findings of putative bacterial targets applicable to the development of potential new therapeutic strategies against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens, including multi-drug resistant bacterial strains.&#010;&#010;Another area of research of the Hughes laboratory has resulted from an ongoing, international collaboration with Infectious Diseases colleagues at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan.  Studies include a focus on 1) etiologies of respiratory infections in adults and children, 2) identification of biomarkers of gut health, and 3) mechanisms of multi-drug antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1734465,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"otheraff":[2423],"phd-degree":[2570],"primary":[2343],"research-discipline":[2506],"research-opportunity":[2557,2556],"training-grant":[2316,2319,2318],"class_list":["post-1730746","faculty-listing","type-faculty-listing","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","otheraff-microbiology-immunology-and-cancer-biology","phd-degree-phd-microbiology","primary-medicine-infectious-diseases-and-international-health","research-discipline-microbiology","research-opportunity-ro-infectiousdiseases","research-opportunity-ro-microbiology","training-grant-biodefense-infectious-diseases-short-term-training-to-increase-diversity-in-biomedical-sciences","training-grant-global-biothreats-training-program","training-grant-infectious-diseases-training-program"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hughes, Molly A. - Research Faculty Directory<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/faculty\/faculty-listing\/mah3x\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hughes, Molly A. - Research Faculty Directory\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The goal of the primary research project in the Hughes laboratory is to investigate a select family of host interferon-inducible CXC chemokines known as CXCL9, CXCL10, and CXCL11 as novel antimicrobial agents to combat bacterial pathogens that cause infections. 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