MD-PhD Candidate
UConn School of Medicine
Disclosure: I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Peter Larson is an MD/PhD Candidate at the University of Connecticut (UCONN). He is currently completing his doctoral research as part of Julia Oh’s group at the Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. He is currently serving as the American Society for Microbiology Young Ambassador to Connecticut. His research aims to leverage the human skin microbiome to promote health, prevent infections, and treat diseases. In the Oh lab, he has been engineering Staphylococcus epidermidis, a ubiquitous skin commensal, to detect and kill Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), as well as secrete therapeutics. He has also pioneered exploring the use of human skin explants and stem cell derived skin “organoids” to model human skin microbiome interactions in the laboratory. Finally, he has implemented a clinical metagenome study investigating the relationship between aging, health, and the microbiome. These data inform how we can leverage the microbiome to combat chronic illnesses, promote healthy aging, and prevent infections commonly acquired by older adults in healthcare settings.