John Alverdy
University of Chicago, IL·Microbiology & Immunology
After major surgery or a severe infection, the community of microbes living in the gut can collapse. Its membership shifts, and it stops producing many of the small molecules, or metabolites, that normally keep the host healthy.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
- Topics
gut microbiome
gut microbiota
microbial metabolites
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Define how gut microbiota composition, the metabolites it produces, and resulting macrophage states relate to recovery from surgical infection, in mice and in the setting of critical illness.
- Determine which mixtures of gut microbiome metabolites, such as butyrate, indoles and other tryptophan derivatives, drive macrophages co-cultured with Serratia marcescens into a survival-associated phenotype, and define the mechanism.
- Test the proposed timer mechanism in which metabolites like lactate accumulate in macrophages and bind histones to switch on genes that time the handoff from pathogen-killing M1 to inflammation-resolving M2 states.
- Enrich the mouse gut with de novo assembled microbial consortia selected as high producers of survival-related metabolites, and test whether they enhance macrophage function and survival after surgical injury and infection.
More about the research
Work in both mice and critically ill patients has shown this collapse, and that it goes along with impaired immune function and poorer recovery. The question this project pursues is whether specific gut-derived metabolites are a cause of good or bad outcomes rather than a bystander, by acting on macrophages, the immune cells that swallow bacteria and then help shut inflammation down.
Why it matters
Surgical injury and serious infection remain dangerous partly because the gut microbiome collapses and immune responses lose their timing. Identifying the specific microbial metabolites that program macrophages to kill pathogens and then calm inflammation could reveal a treatable mechanism. The project's stated end goal is to build and test a purpose-assembled microbial consortium that improves survival in mice after surgical injury and infection, an approach that could be translatable to surgical patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Karen Cyndari
University of Iowa, IA·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Measure whether Borrelia burgdorferi infection breaks down the tight-junction barrier formed by resident synovial macrophages, using infected human synovial explants imaged by confocal microscopy and histomorphometry.
Nathaniel Jeske
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Neuroscience
Identify where pain-sensing neurons and immune cells interact after chronic intermittent hypoxia, using a rodent model that mimics obstructive sleep apnea together with in vivo imaging and behavioral tests of pain sensitivity.
Caitlyn Holmes
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Define how macrophages in the spleen, immune cells that engulf bacteria, restrict Klebsiella pneumoniae during bloodstream infection, a site rarely studied in Gram-negative disease.
The school
University of Chicago: 39 labs on PI Pages, $681M a year on research, 457 research doctorates a year.
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