Andrea Fossati

Assistant Professor
Visiting address: Solnavägen 9, Biomedicum, 17165 Solna
Postal address: C1 Mikrobiologi, tumör- och cellbiologi, C1 V & I Mc Inerney Fosatti, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • Dr. Fossati obtained his PhD in Proteomics and Systems Biology working with Ruedi Aebersold at the Institute of Molecular System Biology (ETH Zurich), where he developed next-generation interaction proteomics approaches for high-throughput generation of interaction networks. As a postdoc with Nevan Krogan he studied virus-host interactions for prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses using a combination of proteomics and functional genomics. In 2023 he got awarded a Data-driven Life Science starting grant to establish his own research group in Stockholm at MTC in 2024.

Research

  • Much like human cells, bacteria are susceptible to fatal viral infections. These bacterial viruses (bacteriophages, i.e phages) have gained significant attention in recent years as one of the most promising alternatives to antibiotics to tackle the emerging problem of drug-resistant bacteria.

    However, just like our cells have immune systems aimed at eliminating viral infections, bacteria possess powerful phage defense systems which greatly reduce the efficacy of therapy using phages. Likewise, phages evolved mechanisms to escape these bacterial defenses resulting in the numerous anti-defense systems widespread across phage families.

    Our lab’s main goal is to discover these bacterial defense systems, understand their composition and viral triggers as well as identifying phage mechanisms to evade them. Driving this goal is the desire to combat phage resistance mechanisms to make bacteria more susceptible to phage predation. In other words, we want to tilt the scale of the phage-bacterial warfare towards the phage by disabling the bacterial immunity.

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