Petraitiene Lab

Ruta Petraitiene, M.D.
Associate Member, Center for Discovery and Innovation

Dr. Petraitiene is an Associate Member of the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) at Hackensack University Medical Center. She earned her Medical Degree with a specialization in Obstetrics and Gynecology from the Kaunas Medical Institute (now the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences) in Kaunas, Lithuania. Early in her career, Dr. Petraitiene transitioned from clinical medicine to translational infectious disease research, bringing a distinctive clinician–scientist perspective to experimental pharmacology, antimicrobial drug development, and biomarker validation.

Following her medical training, she completed fellowship programs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute, where she began her long-standing commitment to translational research in infectious diseases and experimental therapeutics of invasive fungal infections in immunocompromised hosts. Over the past 28 years, her work has focused on defining pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) relationships, validating molecular and serologic diagnostic biomarkers, and optimizing therapeutic strategies for life-threatening infections.

After 14 years at the NIH, Dr. Petraitiene joined Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University as an Assistant Professor of Research in Medicine within the Transplantation–Oncology Infectious Diseases Program, Division of Infectious Diseases. Her research portfolio later expanded to include studies on antimicrobials targeting multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens, integrating pharmacodynamic modeling with preclinical efficacy testing.

Dr. Petraitiene's primary research interests focus on the development of innovative, pharmacodynamically guided strategies for optimizing existing antimicrobial regimens and evaluating novel compounds in development. With more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and extensive laboratory experience in translational pharmacology, her work continues to advance the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of invasive fungal and bacterial infections in immunocompromised patients.

She is an active member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID).

Selected Publications

1. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Zaw MH, Hussain K, Ricart Arbona RJ, Roilides E, Walsh TJ. Combination of systemic and lock-therapies with micafungin eradicate catheter-based biofilms and infections caused by Candida albicans and Candida parapsilosis in neutropenic rabbit models. J Fungi (Basel). 2024 Apr 17;10(4):293. PMID: 38667964.
2. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Zaw MH, Hussain K, Ricart Arbona RJ, Roilides E, Walsh TJ. Combination of systemic and lock-therapies with micafungin eradicate catheter-based biofilms and infections caused by Candida albicans and Candida parapsilosis in neutropenic rabbit models. J Fungi (Basel). 2024 Apr 17;10(4):293. PMID: 38667964.
3. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Maung BBW, Mansbach RS, Hodges MR, Finkelman MA, Shaw KJ, Walsh TJ. Efficacy and pharmacokinetics of fosmanogepix (APX001) in the treatment of Candida endophthalmitis and hematogenous meningoencephalitis in nonneutropenic rabbits. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2021 Feb 17;65(3):e01795-20. PMID: 33361304.
4. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Kavaliauskas P, Maung BBW, Khan F, Naing E, Aung T, Zigmantaite V, Grigaleviciute R, Kucinskas A, Stakauskas R, Georgiades BN, Mazur CA, Hayden JA, Satlin MJ, Walsh TJ. Pharmacokinetics and efficacy of ceftazidime-avibactam in the treatment of experimental pneumonia caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase-producing K. pneumoniae in persistently neutropenic rabbits. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2020 Mar 24;64(4):e02157-19. PMID: 32015048.
5. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Bacher JD, Finkelman MA, Walsh TJ. Effects of host response and antifungal therapy on serum and BAL levels of galactomannan and (1→3)-β-D-glucan in experimental invasive pulmonary aspergillosis. Med Mycol. 2015 Aug;53(6):558-68. PMID: 26129890.
6. Petraitiene R, Petraitis V, Hope WW, Mickiene D, Kelaher AM, Murray HA, Mya-San C, Hughes JE, Cotton MP, Bacher J, Walsh TJ. Cerebrospinal fluid and plasma (1-->3)-beta-D-glucan as surrogate markers for detection and monitoring of therapeutic response in experimental hematogenous Candida meningoencephalitis. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2008 Nov;52(11):4121-9. PMID: 18779361.

Book Chapters

1. Petraitis V, Petraitiene R, Hope WW, Walsh TJ. Endpoint assessment in rabbit models of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis and mucormycosis. Methods Mol Biol. 2017; 1625:259-277. PMID: 28584996.
2. Antachopoulos C, Petraitiene R, Roilides E, Walsh TJ. Mucormycosis (Zygomycosis), Chapt. 13. In: D Hospenthal and M Rinaldi (Eds). Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Mycoses. Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ, 2015; p. 159-168.
3. Antachopoulos C, Petraitiene R, Roilides E, Walsh TJ. Instructive case 10. In: D Hospenthal and M Rinaldi (Eds). Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Mycoses. Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ, 2015; p. 282-284.
4. Yazdani S, Schuetz AN, Petraitiene R, Richardson MD, Walsh TJ. Medically important Rhodotorula species. In: R Russell, M Paterson, and N Lima (eds.). Molecular biology of food and water borne mycotoxigenic and mycotic fungi. CRC Press. 2015; Chapt 29, p. 483-494.