Steffani Strathdee, PhD
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2024 Summit
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The Story of a Scientsist and a Suprbug with Panel Discussion
Affiliation
Harold Simon Distinguished Professor, UCSD Department of Medicine
Links
Bio:
Steffanie Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist who is Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences and Harold Simon Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego where she now codirects the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH). In 2016, Strathdee and colleagues were credited with saving her husband’s life from a deadly superbug infection using bacteriophages –viruses that attack bacteria. The case, which involved cooperation from three universities, the U.S. Navy and researchers across the globe, shows how phage therapy has potential to treat multi-drug resistant bacterial infections which are expected to kill 10 million people per year by 2050. Strathdee and her husband co-authored their memoir called The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug. For her efforts to revitalize phage therapy in the West, she was named one of TIME magazine’s Most Influential People in Health Care in 2018.
