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Author Profile: Yok-Ai Que

Que (ORCID 0000-0001-9443-6101) has 159 works with ~9,187 citations and an h-index of 49, with peak citation years around landmark reviews (2004 Lancet endocarditis review, 861 citations) and phage therapy trials (2016–2024). Topic distribution centers on Medicine, Microbiology, and Bacteria.

Key Contributions

Mechanistic endocarditis work: First-author JEM study showing fibrinogen and fibronectin binding cooperate for valve infection in experimental S. aureus endocarditis (286 citations) and the 2004 Lancet endocarditis review with Moreillon (861 citations).

Phage therapy leadership: Senior author on PhagoBurn, the first randomized controlled double-blind phage trial for P. aeruginosa burn wounds (874 citations), a 2024 Nature Microbiology series of 100 personalized phage cases (430 citations), and a 2016 JID study showing phage-antibiotic synergy in experimental endocarditis.

Current translational work (2026): A rat tissue-cage PK study of five phages showed second-order, concentration-dependent systemic clearance (inverse-titer R² 0.921–0.998), validated by re-analysis of 18 datasets (ΔAICc p<0.001), with transparent limitations (male rats only, uninfected surrogate compartment, ΦK-only route/repeat experiments) and declared conflicts of interest.

Sepsis biomarkers: Co-authored prospective ICU cohort (n=107) identifying PSP/reg as a mortality predictor outperforming CRP and PCT; single-center, modest sample, requiring external validation.

Critical Assessment

Que's record shows sustained high-impact basic-to-clinical translation with strong trial design and honest limitation reporting. Blind spots: reliance on animal models with uninfected surrogate compartments, sex-restricted preclinical cohorts, and modest single-center clinical samples. The 2026 second-order kinetics claim is mechanistically novel but awaits independent confirmation in infected hosts and humans.

 BGPT Author Review

Scientific Quality

Que shows a rare arc from mechanistic pathogenesis (JEM endocarditis adhesin work) through landmark translational trials (PhagoBurn RCT) to current quantitative PK modeling. 159 works, h-index 49, ~9,200 citations indicate sustained influence. Weaknesses: animal-model dependence, sex-restricted cohorts, surrogate uninfected compartments, and reliance on citation-heavy reviews for much of the citation total.

Communication Quality

Papers report clear structure, explicit limitations, declared COIs, and accessible summaries; the 2026 PK paper uses transparent model comparisons (RMSE/AICc). Score held at 7 because much of the visibility stems from reviews rather than widely read primary communication, and methodological detail (WebPlotDigitizer extraction, code-on-request data) limits reproducibility clarity.

Author Novelty

The 2026 second-order phage clearance claim is genuinely novel within phage PK and challenges the default first-order assumption; earlier work (endocarditis adhesin cooperation, first phage RCT, 100-case personalized phage series) was field-defining. Not fully groundbreaking since PK model selection approaches are standard tools applied to a new domain.

Scientific Rigor

The 2026 study used proper model comparison (zero/first/second-order, RMSE, AICc, Friedman/Wilcoxon tests), falsification criteria, declared COIs, and external dataset re-analysis (n=18). Rigor deductions: small per-phage groups (n=2–12), route/repeat experiments only in ΦK, male-only animals, uninfected tissue-cage surrogate, code/data only on request, and no efficacy endpoints.