Assistant Professor
Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA
Peter Jorth, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Biomedical Sciences, and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA. Dr. Jorth completed his PhD in Microbiology at the University of Texas at Austin and completed postdoctoral fellowship training at the University of Washington School of Medicine and Caltech. Dr. Jorth's research focuses on the ecology and evolution of bacteria that cause chronic cystic fibrosis (CF) lung infections. His research group at Cedars-Sinai is studying how Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the Burkholderia cepacia complex evolve to become antibiotic resistant and is studying how these resistance mutations affect bacterial virulence during infection. Contrary to previous hypotheses, Dr. Jorth's research has shown that antibiotic resistance mutations can increase pathogenicity of P. aeruginosa, even in the absence of antibiotic treatment. His group is now investigating how these mutations increase virulence, with the goal of ultimately being able to detect, target, and eradicate hypervirulent bacterial variants in CF lung infections.