Biography
Karim Dabbagh joined Second Genome in 2014. Prior, he served as Vice President of R&D at Pfizer where he led the Immunoregulation department, an R&D group focused on innovative approaches to elicit homeostatic immune responses for the treatment of immune related disorders. At Pfizer, he also led External R&D Innovation for Immunology, Neurosciences and Cardiovascular/Metabolic Therapy Areas. Before joining Pfizer, Karim was the founder of Modus BioMedicine, a biotechnology company focused on treatments for transplantation and autoimmune disease. Leading to that, Karim spent nine years at Roche in Inflammation Discovery Research. Karim obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from University College, London and his BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology from Imperial College, London. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco and at Stanford University where he worked on elucidating the role played by the microbiome in the hygiene hypothesis.
The human microbiome has been proposed to form an integral part of human health and its role in disease is a part of large investigations. Furthermore, the microbiome is under evaluation as both a source of therapeutics as well as diagnostics. The current state of the science and medicine in relation to precision medicine approaches will be discussed.