Luis Serrano

Luis Serrano Pubul
Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG), Barcelona
Project Leader

Bacterial lung chassis for treating human lung infectious diseases.

• Antoni Torres
  Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona

Engineering bacteria for treating human diseases is becoming the new wave in therapeutics. However, despite lung diseases being among the top causes for mortality worldwide currently there is not any treatment based on a live biotherapeutic. Here, we engineered the genome-reduced human lung bacterium, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, as a novel treatment for ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP), a disease with a 10 % mortality rate associated with P. aeruginosa biofilms. First, we obtained a non-pathogenic, non-inflammatory chassis that is safe in murine lungs. Then, we added to this chassis different gene constructs to target P. aeruginosa biofilms and survival. After showing its efficacy as prevention and treatment in acute murine models of P. aeruginosa infection, we showed that the engineered chassis can also dissolve biofilms formed in ETTs of VAP patients. Our chassis can be used in combination with antibiotics affecting peptidoglycan layer formation in gram positive and negative bacteria increasing the efficacy of some antibiotics. This is the first live biotherapeutic that can treat biofilm associated infections in the respiratory tract.

Dr. Serrano did his PhD at the CBM (Madrid) on Cell Biology and he spent 4 years in the laboratory of Prof. A.R. Fehrst (MRC, UK) working in protein folding. Then he was appointed first as Group Leader and later Programme coordinator at the EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) working in Protein Folding and design. Dr. Serrano is since 2011 Director of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG). His group is currently focused on Synthetic Biology, engineering and designing of biological systems. He is EMBO and RACEFyN member and received the Marie Curie Excellence Award. He has been awarded with three prestigious ERC Advanced and PoC Grants, and participated as Principal Investigator in different EC research projects. He joined CRG as an ICREA Research Professor and Group Leader in 2006. He has been scientific founder of fiver start-ups (Diverdrugs, Cellzome, Triskel, EnVivo pharmaceuticals, Pulmobiotics, Orikine).

In our group, we are aiming at a quantitative understanding of biological systems to an extent that one is able to predict systemic features and with the hope to rational design and modify their behavior. By achieving this objective, we are aiming at new global understanding and treatment of human diseases in which the target will not be a single molecule but a network. For this purpose in our group, we develop on one hand new software and theoretical approximations to understand complex systems and on the other we do experiments to validate our predictions.

Centre de Regulació Genòmica (CRG)
Doctor Aiguader, 88
08003, Barcelona
Tel.: (+34) 933 16 01 00

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @lab_serrano