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Katherine P. Lemon, MD, PhD (she/her/hers)

Associated Professor of Molecular Virology & Microbiology and of Pediatrics
Baylor College of Medicine

A physician-scientist, Dr. Lemon follows her curiosity and is fascinated by microbial sciences. After clinical training, she worked with Dr. Roberto Kolter on biofilm formation by Listeria monocytogenes. However, interspecies interaction research in the Kolter lab and microbiome research in other labs captured her attention. Concurrently, as a Pediatric Infectious Diseases doctor, she regularly encountered invasive infections caused by two common human nasal pathobionts, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae. These experiences sparked her curiosity about how benign nasal microbionts resist pathobiont colonization and affect pathobiont behavior. Nasal colonization by S. aureus or S. pneumoniae is a risk factor for infection by the colonizing bacterium at distant body sites and decreasing colonization by these species decreases infections. In the absence of a vaccine, it is critical to develop nonantibiotic therapies to reduce S. aureus nasal colonization. Her long-term goal is to make discoveries that will lead to new microbiota-based approaches to prevent and treat infections by S. aureus and S. pneumoniae and to mitigate the severity of upper respiratory tract viral infections. Most recently, her group is pioneering use of human nasal epithelial organoids (HNOs) as a model system to elucidate mechanisms of bacterial colonization of the human nasal passages.

Dr. Lemon earned a Ph.D. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigating chromosome replication in the gram-positive model organism Bacillus subtilis with Dr. Alan Grossman. After earning an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, Dr. Lemon completed a pediatric residency and a fellowship in Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Boston Children's Hospital. During this time, she performed mentored research with Dr. Roberto Kolter at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lemon started her lab at the Forsyth Institute in Cambridge, MA. She is now an Associate Professor of Molecular Virology & Microbiology in the Alkek Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research at Baylor College of Medicine and a Pediatric Infectious Diseases physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, TX.

Disclosure(s): OraSure Technologies, Inc.: Advisor/Consultant

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