Adriana Le Van 25th International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference 2026

Adriana Le Van

I'm a cellular microbiologist working as a Research Assistant Professor in the laboratory of Dr. Ann Jerse at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the manager of the USU Gonococcal (GC) Isolate Reference Laboratory and Repository for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). I have over 15 years of research experience on GC pathogenesis, starting with my doctoral dissertation work at the University of Maryland (College Park) in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Stein, where I examined how the absence of GC opacity (Opa) protein expression increases transmigration into epithelial cells. My postdoctoral work in Dr. Jerse’s lab focused on vaccine antigen discovery for gonorrhea and was conducted in collaboration with researchers at Oregon State University and University of New Mexico. As the leader of the AMR group in Dr. Jerse’s laboratory, I direct projects on the relationship between fluoroquinolone resistance alleles and gonococcal fitness in vitro and I have identified gentamicin (GEN) resistance mutations by selecting GC with reduced GEN susceptibility from infected mice treated with sub-inhibitory GEN concentrations. I have also led studies to establish an animal model of urogenital Neisseria meningitidis (NM) strain from an outbreak in Indiana, USA. We were able to establish lower and upper tract infections with the unencapsulated Nm strains and tested current Meningococcal Group B Vaccines, 4CMenB and Trumenba in this model.