Francoise Perdreau-Remington
UCSF microbiologist Francoise Perdreau-Remington, PhD – world-renowned for her groundbreaking research at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) into the behavior and genetic properties of staph infections – has been appointed to the French Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian award.
Pierre Vimont, France’s ambassador to the United States, presented the medal to the French-born Perdreau-Remington at a San Francisco ceremony on Feb. 23, marking her official induction into the prestigious order, where she holds the rank of
chevalier, or knight.
When Perdreau-Remington, clinical professor of medicine emerita in the UCSF Division of Infectious Diseases, received notice of the award in early January, she was shocked, she said.
“I thought, ‘Is this real?’” she said in a Feb. 20 phone interview. “I had absolutely no idea I was being considered. I had to sit down and read [the letter] again.”
Every year, the French president appoints new members to the Legion of Honor, based on displays of exceptional merit. The order was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, and official membership is restricted to French nationals, though foreign nationals can receive various distinctions.
Perdreau-Remington’s award pays tribute to her more than 30 years of work with staph bacteria, particularly the often dangerous, continually evolving methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which was first discovered in 1961.
More than 200 families of the drug-resistant strain have cropped up since then, killing an estimated 19,000 Americans every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Perdreau-Remington arrived at UCSF in 1995 to found and run the Molecular Epidemiology Research Laboratory at SFGH, and she immediately set to work analyzing staph and other germs from patients in the hospital and at health clinics around the city, earning the nickname “the sleuth.”
By conducting population-based studies of the rising number of skin and soft tissue infections, in 2001, Perdreau-Remington and her team were able to isolate and identify a particularly virulent strain of MRSA now known as USA300. In 2006, they completed a map of the bacterium’s entire genome, which was published in the British medical journal
Lancet.
“We are now looking into what all these genes mean. There are still so many things to understand,” said Perdreau-Remington, who, though officially retired, is still very much involved in ongoing epidemiological studies following the prevalence of USA300 in local communities.
Meanwhile, members of her former lab are continuing to focus on understanding the strain’s virulence factors, the molecules that specifically cause disease or that allow it to thrive within its host organism.
Now that her schedule is more flexible, Perdreau-Remington has also been traveling overseas and giving speeches to call attention to the very real threat of staph infections and to encourage more funding for the kind of research that earned her the Legion of Honor award.
“Staph infections are a serious problem that requires a serious commitment from government, as well as financial support,” she said. “We need to promote collaboration between countries, so they can learn from what we did and hopefully do it better and avoid future outbreaks.”
Related Links:
Staph Sleuth Detects, Dissects and Protects
UCSF Today, Feb. 10, 2006
UCSF Division of Infectious Diseases
