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Laboratory Director
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX, United States
I'm a molecular microbiologist committed to combating the notorious ESKAPE pathogens and multi-drug resistance. I am developing technologies that evolve and purify bacteriophage (phage) to rapidly generate and formulate therapeutic cocktails. Co-founding the phage technology service center “TAILΦR” provides a unique opportunity to develop intellectual property assets and treat patients on a compassionate use basis.
As Director of Operations for TAILΦR, I coordinate center development, client projects, research, phage discovery, and patient cases amongst team members. I also liaise between clinical, academic, and regulatory teams, including the FDA, for compassionate use patient cases. We are compiling libraries of pathogens and their corresponding phages to reduce response time to the next case or outbreak. Through these efforts I have built collaborations with the Alkek Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research, the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, and Houston Public Works to provide sequencing, safety/sterility, and environmental sampling services respectively.
Other research interests include developing an expedited phage purification scheme to generate therapeutic-quality phage with generally-recognized-as-safe (GRAS) reagents. I’m also a co-inventor of the Modiphi; a continuous-culture device that directs the evolution of phage to target selected bacterial strains, which we employed to generate de novo phage that target previously refractory strains of Extraintestinal Pathogenic E. coli (EXPEC) and P. aeruginosa.
My many passions/hobbies include science outreach, fishing, stand-up comedy, meditation, and steelers football. Maybe one day I'll get to use the kayak I foolishly bought just before the birth of my daughter.
I do not have any relevant financial / non-financial relationships with any proprietary interests.
Thursday, October 20, 2022
1:45 PM – 3:00 PM US ET
Thursday, October 20, 2022
2:35 PM – 3:00 PM US ET