An NYU Langone Health virologist is performing alongside professional actors from London’s West End this fall in the new musical Lifeline. The show explores a pivotal moment in the history of medical research: Alexander Fleming’s 1928 discovery of the germ-killing ability of a laboratory mold, which he named penicillin. Judy Minkoff, PhD, is one of the cast’s 60 scientists and healthcare workers from medical centers in New York City and Maryland, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and several other federal agencies.

Dr. Minkoff first learned of the upcoming production in an academic newsletter distributed to postdoctoral fellows within NYU Grossman School of Medicine. At the very bottom of the flyer, she spotted a casting call for healthcare professionals and scientists who could also sing.

Dr. Minkoff fit the bill. She now works in the Department of Microbiology and its tenOever Lab, which investigates how viruses that cause influenza, COVID-19, and other illnesses interact with their hosts, but she is no stranger to the stage. Since childhood, Dr. Minkoff has performed in choirs, team dance competitions, and more. She also participated in a community-theater production of The Music Man while studying for her PhD, and later founded a pop-inspired girl group, Stiletta. While the pandemic halted most of her performing arts endeavors, Dr. Minkoff says that she jumped at the chance to audition for the musical in late June. Her appearance in the off-Broadway show marks her first foray into professional theater.

In Lifeline Dr. Minkoff and her peers, who appear onstage for the majority of the musical’s 2-hour and 15-minute run time, serve as a kind of Greek chorus that guides the audience through two interwoven storylines. The first portrays Scottish physician and microbiologist Alexander Fleming’s historic discovery and its immediate aftermath. The second, inspired by a true story, follows a modern-day physician attempting to save her childhood sweetheart, a cancer patient who has survived surgery and now struggles with a life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection.

According to Dr. Minkoff, the dual narratives are designed to highlight the impact of the world’s first antibiotic on humankind, and the current public-health and therapeutic challenges posed by rising resistance to most known antibiotics. Caused in part by the overuse and misuse of these drugs, this issue occurs when the drugs kill off vulnerable bacteria cells, leaving the hardiest ones to keep reproducing. Such resistance has been linked to nearly 5 million deaths worldwide in 2019 alone, according to the CDC. To further reinforce the scope of the problem, chorus members also perform four vignettes about real patients who have faced an antibiotic-resistant infection.

“Lifeline gives those of us in healthcare and in the lab the unique opportunity to convey a complicated but important message to the public through the universal language of music,” said Dr. Minkoff. “And that music is so good that I have been listening to it on loop for weeks, not because I am in the show but because I don’t want to stop.”

The musical’s original score, composed by Robin Hiley, is rooted in Scottish folk music. An earlier version of the show, which premiered in 2018 at the Edinburgh Fringe under the title The Mould That Changed the World, toured in London, Glasgow, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., in 2022. During development, the musical’s production team visited Fleming’s laboratory in London, met with his descendants, and consulted medical professionals to ensure accuracy. The patient stories were collected throughout the show’s runs and have been newly added to the current production.

Dr. Minkoff adds that Lifeline does not solely speak to her as an artist and scientist. She has a personal connection to its subject as well, since a young child in her family had developed a dangerous skin disease caused by a penicillin-resistant bacterium. Although the child recovered, Dr. Minkoff says she had feared that the alternative medications would also fail.

“I believe in Lifeline and in the message that everyone, not just scientists or doctors but society as a whole, has a problem that we all need to understand and confront,” said Dr. Minkoff.

“Our whole lab is going to see Judy perform in the show and we are very excited as a community,” said Benjamin tenOever, PhD, the chair of the Department of Microbiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and a professor in the Department of Medicine. He is also the principal investigator of the lab where Dr. Minkoff works.

Lifeline opened at the Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre in New York City on Wednesday, August 28, and is set to close on Saturday, September 28.

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