The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial “superbugs” is a looming crisis. Bacteriophages are viruses that have co-evolved a variety of strategies to kill bacteria over billions of years, and bacteriophage therapy is an alluring alternative to antibiotics.

However, the complex relationships between phages and their bacterial hosts make this a challenging endeavor, and existing bacteriophage therapies have largely been discovered by trial and error. To enable rational design of phage therapy, we have built an integrated computational and experimental framework to systematically characterize phage-encoded immune activators and inhibitors in clinically relevant bacteria.

Sukrit Silas, PhD

Sukrit Silas is an assistant investigator at Gladstone Institutes and an assistant professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at UCSF. During his PhD and postdoctoral training at Stanford and UCSF, respectively, he discovered ways that CRISPR-Cas systems can adapt to RNA molecules, and developed a platform to discover the strategies viruses employ to antagonize host immune systems. He is also the co-founder of BillionToOne Inc., a startup that has developed non-invasive prenatal diagnostic tests and liquid biopsy solutions for oncology.