Vincent Fischetti

Vincent A. Fischetti (born 1940) is a world renowned American microbiologist and immunologist. He is Professor of and Head of the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology at Rockefeller University in New York City. His Laboratory is the oldest continuous laboratory at Rockefeller that started in 1926 and headed by 4 leading scientists over its 100 year history: Homer Swift, Maclyn McCarty, Emil Gotschlich and now Vincent Fischetti. Keeping with the historical theme of infectious diseases, Fischetti's primary areas of research are bacterial pathogenesis, bacterial genomics, immunology, virology, microbiology, and therapeutics. He was the first scientist to clone and sequence a surface protein on gram-positive bacteria, the M protein from S. pyogenes, and determine its unique coiled-coil structure. He also was the first use phage lysins as a therapeutic and an effective alternative to conventional antibiotics.[1][2]

Vincent Fischetti
BornOctober 1940
New York
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma mater
Known for
  • Phage Lysins as antimicrobials
  • Streptococcal M protein
  • Surface proteins on gram-positive bacteria
AwardsNational Institutes of Health Merit Award, 1987 & 1997
Scientific career
Institutions

Research

Fischetti became an Assistant Professor at Rockefeller University in 1973, an Associate Professor 1978, and a full Professor in 1990. He later served as the editor-in-chief of scientific journal, Infection and Immunity for 10 years and section editor of the Journal of Immunology for 5 years.[3] In 1989, the journal Science published Fischetti's initial approaches to developing a Streptococcus pyogenes vaccine using an M-protein-based mucosal delivery approach, which he had developed and found effective at preventing non-type-specific streptococcal infections in mice. The Fischetti laboratory was also instrumental in our understanding of how surface proteins are anchored in the gram-positive bacterial cell wall. His lab identified the LPSTG signal sequence used by the transpeptidase sortase as the anchoring signal. By the late 2000s, he was exploring the impact of phage lysins, a novel form of antimicrobial ammunition, as an alternative to antibiotics, and found it to be a novel solution to target specific antibiotic resistant bacteria.[4][5][6] In 2006, Fischetti was developing a lysin-based oral-nasal spray that can be delivered into the noses and mouths of hospital and nursing-home patients to prevent colonization by MRSA staphylococci.[7] Tests on mice infected with MRSA found their survival rate was significantly improved, and human testing began in 2017.[8] He has since accumulated 'near 40 patents' most dealing with methods to prevent bacterial infections. One such patent dealing with lysins to Acinetobacter was licensed by Bioharmony Therapeutics, Inc in 2019.[9] Several other lysin patents were licensed by ContraFect, a biotech company based in Yonkers NY. ContraFect developed a Staphylococcal lysin that successfully completed FDA phase 1 and phase 2 human clinical trials, the only alternative to antibiotics to achieve these milestones. His postdoctoral students include microbiologist Olaf Schneewind, who identified sortase after leaving the Fischetti lab.[10] Some of Fischetti's popular videos include those dealing with the topic: 'aged eggnog made with raw eggs is safer than drinking it fresh'.[11][12][13][14]

Personal life and Career

Fischetti grew up in West Hempstead, Long Island, NY, and enrolled at Wagner College on a pre-dental track, before majoring in bacteriology and public health.[2] He graduated in 1962, and went on to received his master's degree in microbiology from Long Island University in 1967 before receiving a Ph.D. degree with honors (Founders Day Award) in microbiology from New York University School of Medicine in 1970 under Alan Bernheimer.[2] He later conducted postdoctoral research in the Maclyn McCarty laboratory at Rockefeller University with John Zabriskie and Emil Gotschlich working on Streptococcal M protein. After receiving a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship he spent a year at Albert Einstein College of Medicine under Dr. Barry Bloom, working on the isolation of cytokines. Fischetti then returned to the McCarty lab at Rockefeller University to work on M protein. In 1974 he was appointed Assistant Professor and received his first NIH grant to study M protein, which began a project that was funded for 37 continuous years, 20 of which were 2 consecutive 10-year NIH MERIT awards (he was the first to receive consecutive MERIT awards). [15]

Companies Founded

Fischetti founded several biotech companies based on technology developed in his laboratory. The first, M6 Pharmaceuticals a David Blech company filed in 1994, developed mucosal anti-infective vaccines, but failed due to funding issues. It was reincarnated as Siga Technologies in 1995, and has now morphed into a company developing smallpox and monkeypox therapeutics. The third, Contrafect Corporation, was a biotech started by Robert Nowinski in 2008 on technology that did not fully materialize. ContraFect then licensed the Fischetti laboratory lysin technology in 2009 and is now developing lysin therapeutics as its sole technology. The fourth, Astoria Biologica, was founded in 2023 on technology developed by an MD-PhD student working in both the Fischetti laboratory and Vartanian laboratory at Weill Cornell Medicine to develop therapeutics to treat and prevent multiple sclerosis.

Trainees

Trainees (42): Kevin Jones, Sheenah Mische, Deborah Bessen, Vijay Pancholi, Olaf Schneewind, Anu Vashishtha, Ambrose Cheung, Jasna Raconjac, Donata Medaglini, Ursula Fluckiger, Yoshi Shimoji, Claudia Rocha, Anne Bouvet, Patricia Fontan, Thomas Broudy, Daniel Nelson, Jutta Loeffler, Raymond Schuch, Sung Lee, Ann Derbis, Mathias Collin, Pauleen Yoong, Chad Euler, Patricia Ryan, Jonathan Schmitz, Assaf Raz, Mia Pastagia, Anu Daniel, Monica Fazzini, Greg Resch, Daniel Gilmer, Sherry Kan, Roberto Diez, Rashid Rumah, Rolf Lood, Brian Utter, Uri Sela, Douglas Deutsch, A. Tabata, Ryan Heselpoth, Juliette Wipf, Christopher Cheleuitte-Nieves, Edmondo Campisi

References
  1. "Viruses Are the Antibiotics of the Future". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2022-09-27. "I think phage cocktails will have a use, but it will be a boutique treatment," Fischetti told me on the phone. "But phage cocktails are very complex and difficult to deal with, so I think lysins will be accepted before phages will only because it's a purified material and the FDA is more comfortable with that."
  2. "Germfighter". Wagner Magazine. 2011-12-21. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  3. "Viruses Are the Antibiotics of the Future". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2022-09-27. Vincent Fischetti, a professor of immunology at Rockefeller University, shares Chan's skepticism about the FDA ever giving the greenlight to phage therapies. But Fischetti doesn't necessarily think this is a bad thing—in fact, he thinks he's found an even better solution.
  4. "Lysin therapy offers new hope for fighting drug-resistant bacteria". News. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  5. "Scientists engineer human-germ hybrid molecules to attack drug-resistant bacteria". News. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  6. Storrs, Carina. "Unearthing Anthrax's Dirty Secret: Its Mysterious Survival Skills May Rely on Help from Viruses--and Earthworms". Scientific American. Retrieved 2022-09-27. Then, four years ago, Schuch, along with Vincent Fischetti, a professor of bacteriology at Rockefeller, found a direct link—a type of phage that made anthrax resistant to an antibiotic commonly produced by other bacteria in soil, such as Streptomyces. "The remarkable thing about phages is that they expand the genetic diversity of the host that they infect," says Anca Segall, a phage biologist at San Diego State University. Segall, who calls Schuch and Fischetti's work to uncover the role of new anthracis phages "absolutely spectacular," started sequencing the DNA of phages from marine Bacilli several years ago. Some of the viruses she found induce the aquatic bacteria to sporulate.
  7. Vaisman, Daria (2006-05-30). "The Soviet method for attacking infection". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2022-09-27. Vincent Fischetti, a professor at the Rockefeller Institute, is designing a phage-based enzyme solution that can be sprayed into the noses and mouths of hospital and nursing-home patients. Fischetti and researchers in Tbilisi are also experimenting with using phages to detect anthrax and cholera in the case of a terrorist attack.
  8. "Human-virus hybrid created to kill off MRSA superbug". The Independent. 2017-04-17. Retrieved 2022-09-27. One of the researchers, Professor Vincent Fischetti, of The Rockefeller University in the US, said: "Bacteria-infecting viruses have molecules that recognize and tightly bind to these common components of the bacterial cell's surface that the human immune system largely misses.
  9. "Bioharmony Therapeutics and Boehringer Ingelheim Collaborate to Advance Bacteriophage Lysin Therapeutics for the Treatment of Multi-Drug Resistant Bacterial Infections". www.businesswire.com. 2019-01-15. Retrieved 2022-09-27. NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Bioharmony Therapeutics, Inc. ("Bioharmony"), a biopharmaceutical company focusing on the development of novel therapeutics for hard to treat bacterial infections, announced today that it has entered into a Collaborative Research and Licensing Agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim to develop bacteriophage lysins for the treatment of multidrug resistant (MDR) Acinetobacter infections, a frequent cause of hospital-acquired pneumonia and life-threatening blood or wound infections. Bioharmony licensed this technology from the Rockefeller University. The discoveries are from the laboratory of Vincent A. Fischetti, Ph.D., a faculty member at The Rockefeller University.
  10. "Olaf Schneewind, world-renowned authority on infectious diseases, 1961-2019 | University of Chicago News". news.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-27. Born in Germany, Schneewind earned his bachelor of science and his degree in medicine at the University of Cologne. He came to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, where he worked in the laboratory of bacteriology and immunology led by Vincent Fischetti.
  11. "Homemade Eggnog Can Kill Salmonella with Booze". ABC News. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  12. Arumugam, Nadia. "Why Aged Eggnog Made With Raw Eggs Is Safer Than Drinking It Fresh". Forbes. Retrieved 2022-09-27. Determined to prove, or at least demonstrate with authority, that the copious amount of alcohol in a single batch of the Lancefield recipe (1 pint of Bourbon and 1 quart of rum) is capable of annihilating any salmonella present in the raw egg eggnog after the ageing process, the lab head, Professor Vincent Fischetti, conducted a rudimentary experiment.
  13. Bekiempis, Victoria (2013-10-17). "Multiple Sclerosis Research Points a Finger at Bacteria". Newsweek. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
  14. Ragusea, Adam (28 Nov 2022). "AGE your raw egg eggnog". Youtube.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. "The Rockefeller University » Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology". lab.rockefeller.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-27.
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