The Gut Microbiome-Brain Alliance: The Connection to Health and Disorders

Janet M. Sasso earned her B.S. in Biology from The Ohio State University. She also holds her Master of Public Health from OSU where she focused her research on public health equity and education. She joined CAS in 2006 as an Information Scientist in the life sciences department curating pharmacology, pharmaceutical, environmental science, and toxicological research information. She is passionate about scientific communication to accelerate scientific analysis and inspire advancement worldwide. 

Ramy Ammar, Ph.D. has more than 17 years of experience in academic and industrial R&D settings. He is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, graduated from faculty of Pharmacy, and has received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from University of Bonn, Germany in 2014. He trained during his postdoc position at the faculty of Pharmacy, Bonn University, on physiologically based pharmacokinetics modelling and simulation to enrich his wet lab experience with dry lab tools. His research interests are related to the endocannabinoid system, disorders of gut-brain interaction, gut microbiome, phytomedicine, and novel alternative approaches for reducing animal use in pharmacology and toxicology with a track record of publications and conference presentations in these fields. He is currently part of the global R&D organization within Bayer Consumer health working as an Emerging science and Innovation Director leading the transformational innovation for the Digestive Health category.

Sarkis K Mazmanian, Ph.D., is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also received his doctoral training in microbiology and immunology. There, he studied the mechanism by which Gram-positive pathogens anchor surface protein adhesins during bacterial infection. He was a Helen Hay Whitney Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School where he studied how symbiotic bacteria promote healthy maturation of the immune system. Dr. Mazmanian was promoted to assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in 2006, and later that year moved to Caltech to start his independent laboratory. His laboratory currently focuses on the study of beneficial bacterial molecules from the human gut microbiome as novel therapies for immunologic and neurologic disorders. This research has led to the identification of novel drug candidates being developed for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Parkinson’s disease.