Beer & Biotech with Dr. Bryan Hsu

Commercial Applications of Reprogramming Gut Bacteria for Improved Health

The gut microbiome is a powerhouse of microbial metabolism, converting our unused dietary materials into usable and biological products. How can we leverage this for therapeutic value? We have developed a strategy to reprogram gut bacteria to produce and release the proteins of our choice. With mouse model data showing we can address key components of intestinal inflammation and obesity, our technology has the versatility to produce biologics-on-demand directly in the gut.

Dr. Bryan Hsu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. His current research interests include characterizing the influence of phages in bacterial consortia, the genetic engineering phages to introduce new functions to microbiomes, and investigating the physiological significance of gut phages for the mammalian host. Prior to VT, Bryan was a Rosenbloom Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School studying the effects of lytic phages on defined commensal bacterial communities in the gut, and engineering phages to functionally reprogram resident gut bacteria. He earned his PhD in Chemistry at MIT developing polymeric drug delivery formulations and holds bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of California, Berkeley.